


Tabula Rasa

by Davechicken



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Inappropriate Use of the Force, Injury, Interrogation, M/M, Multi, NO rape, Torture, Violence, dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-18 18:54:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8172278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Poe is captured by the First Order... again?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

>  
> 
>   
> 

Poe Dameron’s ship is going down. It’s going down, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. His starboard wing took one hit too many, and it’s billowing black, acrid smoke that’s backflooding into the cockpit. He can barely see through it, and he pushes _Black One’s_ nose towards the surface, using memory and internal sense of ‘up’ to orient the landing.

Landing. It’s a strong word for what is, basically, a controlled death-drop. BB-8 whirls in chirruped alarm, but Poe can’t do anything but hold his breath to reduce the toxic flow into his lungs as the nose touches down. The engines long-since killed, only his forwards momentum keeps the craft going as it careens through the muddy ground, churning up a sluice behind. Something cracks under his legs, and he feels a sharp pain near one knee. His hands struggle to grip the joystick as the craft bounces and screams in her death-knell... his poor baby. He loves her, and this is how he treats her?

The slide stops, and the cockpit hatch pops open. Poe hacks in fresh air over the stale poison, and hammers again at the faulty ejector-mechanism buttons. His mind processes a moment too late that – if it works? He’ll be jettisoned up into the air when he’s already on the ground. And that maybe he’d be better just, you know, exit normally?

“BB...”

Poe claws at the harness, but his hands are – oh – one of them is sticky and wet... 

“BB... buddy?”

No response. Poe can’t operate the clasp, and he needs to get out before the ship blows. He looks down and sees his leg, and wishes he hadn’t.

He won’t be walking on that any time soon. The break is obvious, and compound. 

He’s probably going to die here. He’s definitely not charming his way out of this, because he can’t even get out of the ship. The battle overhead doesn’t look good for the Resistance, and he hears the crackle of the command to retreat play out over his failing comm channel.

Poe kind of can’t even blame them. Not really. The losses they’ve sustained are almost unbearable, and they’re so low on ships and pilots as it is, and this is a bust, and they lost _him_ , and maybe he’s just an expendable pilot, but he was a damn _good_ one. He can hold onto that. Right? He can hold onto that. When he’s gone, he’ll be remembered by some friends. When he’s gone, he’ll be a scratch on a wall of both sides to this fight: a minus for one, a plus for the other.

Yeah. 

The smoke peters out, and he leans his head back into the seat, feeling his body get colder. It’s his imagination, right? Shock doesn’t set in this fast, does it? 

He knew, once. Knew all sorts of things. But he can’t get out of this ship, and there’s no one to save him, so he’s either going to die here, alone, or—

There’s a familiar, blood-chilling _vvvuuuuhwooooar_ overhead. _Imperial_ – no – _First Order_ ships. They’re coming down, and they’re going to catch him.

And kill him. Or.

Or.

Worse.

He reaches for his blaster, shakily. There was no rescue last time, just a trooper who didn’t want to be a trooper. He won’t get the same luxury or luck this time around, and the Resistance can neither afford to – nor needs to – save his ass. He’s expendable, in every sense of the world. 

The safety goes with a push of his thumb. It’s do or die. Or... well. Do _to_ die. The Order will never let him live, or give him a quick death. He’s owed some more pain for what he did, for all those lives on the Starkiller base. 

And yet, a part of him wants to hold on. Even knowing what’s to come – even with the memory of those fingers inside his skull like electric worms, burrowing and gnawing – he just doesn’t want to _die_. He doesn’t! He wants to live, and he hammers again at the release catch. He pounds his sternum, furious, and screams wordless insult. 

Over and over, and the troopers get close enough that he can take a shot (his vision is so blurred he can’t focus worth shit), and then he remembers:

_Hot sand. Rifle butt in shoulder. Dark air. A bolt frozen, crackling, and impotent. The figure on the other side, with the fire halving the distance between them._

_A mask. A face he knew – somehow – intimately well, through the covering. He’d been so annoyed with the man, so ready to rip it off..._

Someone has crept up to blindside him, and he feels the kiss of pain before the release of unconsciousness.

***

When Poe wakes up, his head does hurt a little. He can’t make his eyes unglue for a moment, lacquered shut through lack of use. He tries to turn his head, but it’s a struggle.

There’s a whirring noise, some clicks, and a metallic-sounding voice tries to soothe him. He tries to scream, but the goopy feeling gets heavier, and then something sweet hits the back of his throat, and he’s back under.

***

It happens over and over, a panic that settles in and is sedated moments after it arises. He tries to condition himself not to panic (and thus, trigger the drugging), but that leaves him in a hazy mess. He can’t tell when he’s really awake, because the dreams drift in and out alongside the ‘reality’. 

Green. Blues. Greys. Blacks. Whites. Reds. Everything is stark, or dull. There’s no vibrancy, but no pain, either.

Light. Sound. Movement. 

He dreams of fingers in his skull, and fingers through his hair. He dreams of the smell of burning ships, and caf in the morning. What was once his life bleeds into what might have been, and the only thing he knows is he has to get _better_ , or he’ll never get out.

Not that he’s even sure why he’s being held prisoner like this. Is he forgetting the torture? Does he only remember the periods between? 

It would be a mercy, if not for the fact it makes him wonder _what he’s forgetting_. What is so terrible that he can no longer face it? Is Kylo finally flaying him open? Has he given everything up? Is there even a Resistance still fighting?

Poe does not know.

Any of it.

The distress gets too high, and out he goes again.

It’s horrible.

He’d rather remember the torture.

***

When he finally wakes – for good – for _now_ – Poe’s hosed down and put in clean clothes. Droids see to him, and he guesses it’s so he doesn’t try to woo his way to freedom. He’s wobbly on his feet, but he pulls away from the protocol unit at every offer of assistance, wondering what’s to come.

Has he healed enough to really be tortured, now? Or are they expecting something new?

What he doesn’t think he’ll see, when the door opens, is a gently decorated room. 

It’s almost at odds with what he imagines – and has seen – of First Order decor. There’s wide, deep couches and the odd cushion. A low table, with caf and a jug of water and glasses and a bowl of fruit.

The man he understands (from his insignia, and from his intel) to be the General responsible for the Starkiller, and...

And. Merely feet away, hands clasped and _wringing_ together, is a face Poe knows so well, if... weirdly so. 

Ben. No. _Kylo_. That’s the name he goes by, though the name is attached to a mask. A mask Poe knows all too well, though it’s placed on the table next to the bowl of fruit like it’s a set of speederbike keys. Innocuous, and quotidian. Like it isn’t a face that’s killed millions, that unblinking brow and the invisible eyes.

Kylo fidgets, where Hux sits calm and composed. The two couldn’t be any different from one another, Poe thinks: order and chaos. The Knight perks up, his expression a mess of shifting features over those striking points of nose, lips, ears. 

“Poe,” comes the polished, Core-accented greeting.

Poe. Not ‘Dameron’, not ‘pilot’, not even the most-likely ‘Resistance scum’. 

“What is this, the pre-torture warm up session? You know... show me all the things I’ll get if I co-operate, so the pain hurts more?”

He doesn’t expect the whirled head from Kylo, looking to him, then Hux, then back.

It’s not... it’s not the In Control person he expects to see. Not in Kylo, though he sees it in Hux.

“We’re not going to torture you,” Hux tells him, gently.

Weirdly. 

“Please: sit?”

Poe is feeling woozy, but he also doesn’t want to let it show. Still, sitting down would be better for concealing that, so he does. At a distance. “Cut to the chase: I remember your hospitality last time. I’m not in the mood to play mind games.”

“...last time?”

“You know, the coy act might work on other people, _General_ , but not me. I’m not going to sell the Resistance out, no matter what tricks you use on me. Like I told your buckethead here—”

There’s a minute hiss, pained, as Kylo sits upright. Poe watches as his eyes rotate quickly through things, and there’s a brush against his mind that he can’t keep out. He tries – fuck, does he try – and he remembers the chair. Remembers the mask looming over him, the hand lifted to pluck through his eyes and into his—

“That memory is false,” Kylo says. “You were – and never have been – our prisoner.”

“What do you remember?” Hux asks, fussing at the central crease in his pants. He has nicely manicured nails, and Poe knows (for some reason) that the gloves beside Kylo’s helmet are his, and rarely removed.

“You think this is funny?” He’s unsettled by this, which is likely the point. Disorient him. Shake his world up. Make him blurt things out. 

“He thinks he was captured on Jakku,” Kylo replies for him. “He thinks we interrogated him, and that... _he_ broke him free.”

The way Kylo says ‘he’ makes his blood chill. Finn? His name is Finn. Not the string of numbers and letters they gave him, dehumanising him utterly. He repeats it in his mind, to give the man back his sense of self. He remembers the relief when he found him, remembers the brisk – and almost failed – escape. 

“Poe... you were captured by the _Resistance_ on Jakku,” Hux sneers in annoyance.

“Right.” He stares at blue eyes, one brow arched in disbelief. “Interesting fantasy you got going, there. You into some weird, kinky roleplay, or is this your idea of Good Cop?”

“It is true: you are one of our most feared and efficient pilots. You were supposed to step back from the front lines, but you insisted on this mission. The Resistance got their hands on you, and we’ve been trying to retrieve you ever since.”

Hux says all this with a weird intensity and sincerity. An emotion that almost rings true. 

It’s utter banthacrap of course, but it’s still... no.

Just playing on the fact he hates being abandoned. _Twice_. Even if he does volunteer for the kind of missions that mean he’ll be abandoned. “I’d never fight for you. So you should come up with a better cover story. Maybe you could have pretended you were ... I dunno, planning your _own_ treason?”

Hux’s lips tighten just a little. “Funny, I suspect you told them the same thing. Over and over, likely. Conditioning someone so devoted and developed as you is never easy.”

Hah. As if. “The Resistance would never—”

“You think? When they used you to blow up our prime weapon? You think they would consider breaking an enemy agent in for their own uses wasn’t worth the means? Any means?”

Poe nods. Fiercely. The Resistance just would _not_. He’s also not sure why Kylo isn’t talking.

“He used to work for us, you know. Finn. He worked with my training cadre, before he deserted.” Hux looks disgusted with himself at that. “When your TIE was downed on Jakku, we sent search teams for you. We got word that he had taken you prisoner.”

“No, he was a stormtrooper. I was his pilot. I got him off the ship.”

“He kidnapped you from your downed TIE, _Commander_. You were abducted, but we have you back.”

Poe wonders why they think this story will wash with him. He’s not First Order. He’s Resistance, through and through. He believes in the Republic, believes in General Organa. He believes in what they stand for, and—

“It will take time for him to remember,” Kylo says, very quietly. “I can assist, but it would likely be traumatic.”

“I’d rather not any trauma, thanks, if I get the choice,” Poe snarks, expecting to be told at last that it wasn’t optional. To get to the punchline of this sick joke: to pretend that torturing and conditioning him was _helping_ him, that he should be grateful.

“If you insist,” Kylo says, instead. “The memories will come in time, whatever we do about it.” 

“Whose idea was this scheme?” Poe asks. “Because, gotta admit, when I said ‘rethink your technique’, this was not what I had in mind. It’s really something, but it’s not...”

His hands paint circles in the air, a quirk of lips in the place where words would go.

“Very well, if you need to go slow, we’re in no rush,” Hux says. “I would prefer you to be your old self again, but we’ll do this at your pace.”

Hux stands, and Poe watches him, like he would some poisonous insect. Better to keep the thing in your field of vision, so you don’t get stung. 

“You’ll need to be supervised out of these rooms, but you’ll want for nothing.”

“Except an escape pod?”

Hux... smiles? It’s kind of. Unsettling. Poe feels odd watching it, and looks away. 

“Come along, Ren.”

Kylo shakes his head. “Give me a moment?”

“Very well.” 

Hux actually _nods_ to both of them, then goes. 

Leaving Poe with the Knight, and a pounding that hitches higher. _Now_. Now is when the torture starts. Yes? He’d rather it started, than this bullshit pranking. He’s not going to fall for it, and he’d rather they just—

Kylo gets up and walks over to him, and Poe’s whole fucking universe stops moving. Prickling at his temples, memory, and then there’s arms around him.

He’s being hugged.

By Kylo Ren.

Who is hugging him. Right now. With his arms. He’s hugging him. 

Poe freezes utterly.

“I won’t let them take you from us, again,” Kylo whispers in his ear. 

The tone is equal parts threat and promise, and it sends an odd little quiver down his spine, into his hips. Poe chastises his body, trying to ignore the reaction. He doesn’t push Kylo off, but he doesn’t soften in his grip, either. 

What do you say to that?

“I’m escaping the minute I can. Just so you know.”

A hand in his hair, a tiny kiss to his temple, then the man withdraws. He picks up his helmet, leaving Poe sitting – still stunned – on the couch. 

“We’ll see.”

Poe has no way to process or understand what’s happening.

When the terrible two have been gone long enough, he runs into the shower, turns it on scalding hot. He stands in the heavy droplets and pulses until it almost burns the skin from his shoulders.

_This can’t be happening._

It’s a trick.

It has to be.

He remembers the Resistance. He doesn’t remember _them_.


	2. Chapter 2

Poe stands in the shower. Hot. So hot. He’s not looked down at his body to see the latest marks, but he can feel the deeper wounds. Scar tissue outside is nothing (some people find it attractive, after all), but the injuries that go further in... he can feel them.

He can know how that his right leg doesn’t feel ‘right’, not now. It seems like it’s stiffer, though it’s no longer oozing blood and spitting bone out. He can feel something in his sternum that’s out of place. Not dislocated, just... wrong. Like when he breathes, there’s spaces that aren’t filling, or something.

Could be the lack of Bacta-pressure around his chest. He inhales, and the world doesn’t push back as it has been for... however long. He lets his eyes wander down to where he knows the injury was.

The skin is healed silvery-threaded. There’s no swelling, but he knows that with adequate Bacta and surgery that he could be healed very quickly. 

Still. It points to several weeks at the bare minimum.

This is one hell of an elaborate ruse. Surely Kylo could just have taken anything he needed by now? Even if he was dying of his injuries? Maybe even when he was barely-lucid, drugged and unable to resist. The idea makes his knees buckle, and he drops to all fours, heaving up dry, throat-burning sloughs of air. The concept of being so thoroughly used—

_Like they suggested – no – **insisted** – that the Resistance had done to him._

_Which was a load of bullshit. He knew the Good Guys would never **do** that. He did._

_And still... flashes. Flickers. Finn’s face, bright and hopeful._

**_You need a pilot._ **

**_I need a pilot._ **

That was real. It was. He couldn’t have been made to imagine that. Couldn’t be made to imagine... 

Before?

For a minute, he can’t connect with anything earlier than Finn, and then the next memory:

_A tree. A special one. He stands between his parents’ legs, looking at the small thing, and the man beyond. He’s planted this: a gift for his parents. A gift. Force-sensitive, they say, and he sees the metal on the man’s hip._

_This man is the Jedi. He’s Luke Skywalker. Behind him are more of Mom and Dad’s friends, and a small child who is the only one not looking at anyone else, or at the tree. The adults all talk, and the boy stares at him with brown, brown eyes. Brown like a deep-Yavin tree-trunk. Not like this one, whimsy and bright. He sort of feels old, even though he looks young._

_Ben, someone says, and the child is scooped up onto shoulders. Poe can’t stop watching him, and neither of them smile. They don’t need to._

Poe pulls his head into his hands, clutching at his hair, and rocks on his knees. Why did he have to remember that? Back before it all went inevitably wrong. Back when they were kids, before they even knew the First Order existed. Why?

There’s gaps. Gaps where things should be. 

Someone’s been in his head, and he can’t say for sure who it was. He would give almost anything for it all to come back, because then he’d have gone through it. He wouldn’t be forever waiting for it, not sure when the next flash of recollection would hit. He could progress, and he could know – and decide – and act – in full awareness.

But it isn’t a choice, or he’d flip a switch and know everything.

Eventually, he realises no one will notice if he drowns like this. Not for a while, unless they’re surveilling him. He has to be responsible, and that means turning the tap off. Grabbing a towel. Wobbling again, and grabbing the sink for balance.

His life feels like it’s just out of reach, like it’s locked away. He tries to scratch at the boxes, but they vanish when his focus goes to them. He can only sense them out of the periphery of his vision, and they slip like soap through his fingers if he grabs at them.

Fingers pushing one after the other into his thumb, and he tries to do a reality check. List everything he knows, everything he remembers.

He remembers his parents. That’s clear. He remembers them, but for some reason his mother, in his mind, has a less-defined face. He could identify her in a holo, and he knows he’s recognise her if he saw her. It’s just that the memories are so old they’re less detailed, more... interaction, summary, than a recording. Like something he could tell to someone else, or had been told by someone else.

His parents are real, though. They are. He isn’t prepared to bend on that, though the concept horrifies him.

Shara died. His mother. Shara. That is real, too.

He knew Ben. That much he’s never doubted.

Then it all gets kind of fuzzy until he remembers Jakku, or... sort of remembers Jakku. There’s another haze when he tries to push for details, and the details push him away. It’s real. It’s all real. Sitting in a chair, feeling the prickly intrusion, looking up at the mask of – no the face – the – it flickers like a faulty holo-call. One moment it’s Kylo, the next it’s Finn. Such pain, such confusion. 

The hand that reaches for him – gloved? Bare? He can’t tell, and he staggers through the room to the bed. He doesn’t want to relive that memory, even if it tells him who was responsible.

He knows. It’s Kylo. Not Finn. Finn would never do such a thing. Finn was pure and good and noble and true. Finn wasn’t a mass-murdering lunatic. 

_And yet... he was almost too pure. Almost too good. He was so great, he almost seemed flawless. Or was that Poe’s rose-tinted goggles?_

No. The flickers are put there by Kylo. He’s sure. They’re forced into his mind, the same way that other images could be pulled out. It’s a trick. A trap. A sick, and horrible game. It’s nothing like reality, not at all.

He pulls the covers around himself to hide, and fights a whimper into the pillow.

***

In his dreams, he remembers words on the other side of the transparisteel. Worried conversations, concerned tones. His eyes had barely worked, but now he can interpret them.

He can unfilter the background noise, and hear _who_ it is. How they’re worried. How they’re relieved.

_We’ve got him back._

_I know._

_We’ll get through it. Whatever it takes._

_You really think—_

_I know. We’ll get through it. We always do._

A long, long game, indeed. 

***

Poe wakes up hard. This is not, in and of itself, cause for concern. He’s a normal, full blooded male. It makes perfect sense.

What doesn’t make sense is the head full of _filth_. The sheer, unbridled pornography parading behind his eyelids. He can’t get away from the image of...

It’s awful to even admit to it. The thoughts are intrusive and unrelenting. It’s either his over-active imagination, or another Force-trick.

A tousle for power, a repeated flip over-and-over who sits on top. Clawed fingers in palms, biting of throats, grunts and moans. Hair in fists, and then there’s a strange sensation of fingers in his ass.

Poe doesn’t remember knowing what that feels like – any romantic assignations are distant from his memory right now – but he’s left with a throbbing, aching, needing emptiness inside his own rear that he just cannot shake off.

He’s never done this before, but he doesn’t know if he could even stop himself. Poe spits on his finger, and pushes it between his legs. Rubs over and over (it’s still good), never quite pushing it in until – _shit shit shit_ – the weird daydream does it, and there’s a moan of pain and Poe slips the finger inside.

It’s like feeling it twice. Once through the images in his head, and once through the very, very real  digit in his hole. He’s dry, and he’s so turned on, and then...

His other hand goes to cup his cock, to curl around it as he rolls onto his shoulders and smushes his face into the pillow. It’s awkward and difficult, but the images...

Fingers dipping into a hole, slick with lube. Panting, broken sounds and beggings, and then a clash of tongue and lips. Dark hair and bright; pale skins paler under pinching grips. Wiry arms and thick, rolling against one another, the sensation of a prick against the silky firmness of a second. Growls, and then the rightness of being filled with more fingers. 

He isn’t even sure which of them is fucking the other. He doesn’t know if it matters. Bitten lips and messed-up hair. An ass that thrusts onto a hand, and then holds still as a thicker, snubber, lovelier thing is inside.

Poe cries out in frustration, coming all over his hand. His ass tightens around the finger, and he expects this means he likes the idea of bottoming, but it’s the first he remembers.

_Not his first?_

_No, who was it?_

_Where is that memory hiding?_

He keeps his lone digit inside as he collapses, wanting to feel the tingly afterglow a bit longer. It’s filthy. It’s _filthy_ , getting off to thoughts of those two. It’s horrible, and he can’t _stop thinking about it_. They’re still going at it, and Poe screams into the pillow.

His cock can’t get up again, but it is damn well trying. His hips pull away from every thrust, but he beats it raw and hard.

It’s not that they are unattractive. Both of them have perfectly wank-worthy faces and bodies. It’s more the fact that they’re the freaking _enemy_ , and he’s dragging a fist over his spent cock like he deserves the pain that’s mingled in with it.

Kisses. They kiss. They’re bad, and they kiss. They’re evil, and all he can feel is a vast wave of affection, and that’s just his imagination applying his concepts of a relationship, right? 

Kylo likes his throat bitten, near the collarbone. Hux likes his nipples pulled to distraction. (Why does he know this, or why does his mind think it does?) Kylo gets off hard to praise and punishment in equal measure, and Hux isn’t far behind. They roll over, so the one astride the other is the one stuffed to bursting.

Poe can imagine how that would change the angle inside, and allow for slower, steadier control by the receiving party. He can also get behind the hands on hips and waist, manipulating the rock and roll. Can get behind the feeling of this being a dance, and then – oh Maker – another flip. The guy on the bottom throwing the other down, and bending knees back to fuck him in earnest.

He comes again, but it’s mostly dry. He’s nowhere near recovered, and he’s achingly sore. 

Finger out of ass. Hand off dick.

The waves of pleasure don’t subsist, and he screams in frustration as he humps the bed. He just wants them to stop fucking in his mind, please, and he can’t – he can’t – 

“Come for me,” Hux whispers, fingers curled into the other’s hair to hold him still.

Poe can nearly feel the gust of air that carries the words.

He feels Kylo’s climax like a distant – glorious – bassline through a speaker. A phantom arousal he can’t possibly hope to emulate. His body freaks out at the lack of his own climax, and he can – there’s sticky, sticky, sticky. Not all his sticky. Hux is coming at the same time, practically, and Poe feels like he’s fucked and been fucked into oblivion. He can nearly trace the dribbles of come and lube over his inner thighs, and this better not be part of the torture.

If he’s forced to endure vicarious sex regularly, he won’t be happy.

(And still, part of him wonders how it even works. The two seem to be such equal opposites, but maybe that’s why they do? If they do. If. If it isn’t all just his mind, or Kylo messing with him. It _feels_ real, in the ache between his thighs...)

Poe grumps his way to the shower. His legs are a little stiff, and he feels utterly ashamed with himself. If the other two men _are_ in a relationship, then it’s none of his business. He doesn’t need to fetishise it, and he certainly doesn’t need to understand it. He doesn’t need to work out if it’s good, or healthy, or sensible. He doesn’t need to consider it.

Even if he’d... when Kylo... he’d thought that Kylo had been implying...

_No._

There is nothing to think about. Nothing to feel envy over. This is ridiculous.


	3. Chapter 3

Okay. The rooms he’s been given aren’t _that_ bad. If anything, they’re better than what he had with the Resistance, but that’s because the Resistance can’t put down long-term roots. They don’t have Star Destroyer-class ships, and they can’t settle and colonise a planet properly, for fear of being culled. 

He knows that. Right? Like he knows where the Resistance base is. (D’Qar.) No one has asked him, not that he remembers them asking, so either he’s told them, they know, or... well. It can’t be that they don’t _care_. 

Poe would not give them that knowledge, not willingly. Even if he believed they’d kidnapped him (which he doesn’t), those people are still people. Those lives could still be snuffed out. And it’s one thing fighting for your survival, but it’s a whole other thing wiping out a settled base of people he actually likes in the cold light of day.

This is beyond anything he’s ever been trained for. Torture, they tell you about. They give you briefings. Tell you how to survive, and how to keep information. How to cope with isolation, with sleep deprivation. (Not that any of it really can help when you’re _in_ the situation. All the mantras and exercises to fall back on are nothing in the face of real agony.) No one tells you how to deal with your whole reality warping.

He takes stock of things that he knows (or as much as he can know) are real. Things he can touch. He has to believe his senses, or he’ll be adrift in the blackness of eternity (and wow, he didn’t think he was still capable of such a teenage angst).

Living room. Couches. Small fridge unit with snacks and drinks. Meals delivered. ‘Fresher. Huge screen for holos. Restricted intra-net, not the outside world. Soft rugs in places. Cushions that smell loved and lived in, and of detergent, too. 

Small keepsakes that dot around the room, making it look eerily like it _could_ be his quarters, but not quite. He has no memory of this before he was brought in. A strange little carving in dark wood that feels like he should know what it’s for, how he got it. Dogtags. Scraped, scuffed, and indented with his name in Aurebesh. A rank that isn’t _Commander_. 

No Commander would – no pun intended – command a suite like this. Even on recapture, or... ‘liberation’. It’s a flaw in the—

“You were offered other ranks, you know.”

When did Kylo enter? 

He’s wearing his mask, but Poe finds that’s more reassuring. His voice is mechanically altered, more distant. “Oh?”

“You didn’t want to give up work on the front line, even though I begged you to take a step back. You couldn’t give up the TIEs.”

Replace ‘TIE’ with ‘ship’ in general, and it sounds like something he’d do. “Why did you try to get me to stop?”

“In case something like this happened: you got shot down. Killed. Worse.”

Worse. Like had happened to him the first time, after Jakku. Whichever story he chooses to believe in, whichever reality is ‘real’, he was kidnapped and tortured. His memories altered, his life pulled to pieces. 

Frankly, Poe would rather not have to deal with that concept at all. He braces himself for another snappy exchange, but he notices that Kylo’s demeanour is anything _but_ aggressive and hostile. For all he’s masked, he’s – well – edgy? 

“Would you like to leave this room for some time?”

“...and... go where?”

“Walking.”

“Around your Star Destroyer.” Poe tries to not let his incredulity colour his tone too much, but it’s just so surreal. “You aren’t worried I’ll memorise intel to give back to the Resistance?”

“You won’t be given the ability to do so until you’ve remembered you don’t wish to.”

Oh, yeah, right. “Sure. I mean, why the hell not? Not like I got a better offer. Right?”

He watches as Kylo sways slightly. It’s weird. This whole _act_ is bizarre. This isn’t the demeanour he remembers, not from the _Finalizer_. It’s more like... like Ben...

The taller man nods, and then gestures to the doorway.

Kylo thinks he won’t get access to share intel. Kylo doesn’t know how resourceful he is.

***

“Where you gonna take me?” Poe asks, falling into step alongside him. He’s expecting the long legs to chew through the decking, but Kylo is checking his stride to make it easier for him.

Which is interesting to note.

“Where would you like to go?”

“Home?”

Another tightening of his shoulders.

“I mean, if I lived here, I’d have one, right?” He doesn’t want to upset the Knight too much, even if he really would rather be released and left to go back to the Resistance. But he can’t help pushing at boundaries, poking at open wounds.

“Yes.”

“So can I see it?”

“...later.”

The tone of voice tells him to stop pushing, but Poe isn’t happy with that answer. “So you have time to make something look right for the lie?”

“No, because I... because I didn’t... because it might trigger memories you’re not ready to deal with, yet.”

Or that Kylo hasn’t thought of in enough detail to put in his head. “I still think I’d rather know.”

“Very well.”

Huh. Not so difficult to sway him. Interesting.

***

The quarters he’s taken to are even bigger than the ones he’s just come from, and Poe is hit by a wave of déjà vu that knots up his gut. This place looks lived in, and not just by one person. There’s the detritus of at least one other soul, and his head whips to the door.

 _The_ door. Behind which...

Then up to Kylo.

“You... last night?”

“You felt that?”

“You should know. Didn’t you do it on purpose?”

Kylo shakes his head, then ducks it. “We were always strongly connected. And when I am... sometimes it is harder for me to contain it.”

Ice pours down his spine. “I want to go back to my room.”

“Poe, I—”

“Now. Please.” The scent of sex – only a memory, but strong enough to make him nauseous – clings to the closed door. Knowing that he’d been made an unwilling voyeur to their relationship... That it wasn’t just in his head...

“We miss you.”

 **Absolutely not acceptable.** “I want to go back.” He keeps his voice as level as he can, but won’t budge. This is more than he can handle, and he needs to freak out on his own.

Kylo guides him out, and they go the short distance to the prison suite.

***

It’s much later when the other visitor arrives. Poe could have guessed it would happen, but it’s still strange when the General alerts him with a knock, waits a moment, and then enters.

Much more polite than Kylo had been.

“I understand you were... given access to somewhere you... perhaps should not have been?”

He’s straight to the point. Efficient. No beating about the bush.

“You could say that.” More it was the knowledge that he really did go through a mental, sexual assault. That it wasn’t a dream, or a memory, or a pushed through vision. “You maybe want to tell your fuck buddy to keep it behind closed doors?”

“Ah.”

A single word, and he watches as Hux’s lips purse. That wasn’t expected.

“I mean, I know I’m only a prisoner of war here, but... fairly sure some things are even against _your_ style manual for torture? Or does anything go?”

“Believe me, I would not... wish that to happen to a prisoner,” Hux replies, delicately. “This situation is an unusual one. Kylo has...” 

What? _What_?

“I don’t want to know what you two get up to,” Poe bites out.

“I will endeavour to keep him more... under control. But you know how he—” Hux stops. “Perhaps you did, once.”

“Whatever kinky stuff you do, I don’t want in on it. End of.”

“Understood.”

And there’s sadness, there, isn’t there? In the tightening of his gaze, in the hands clasped behind his back. 

Poe can’t get the measure of it. If this is some really, really sick roleplay they like to do to spice up their bedroom life, then he doesn’t want part of it. He also doesn’t want to consider that anyone could be so warped as to thinking that conditioning a stranger into believing he was part of their relationship could be _fun_ or titillating. And why? What would they get from it? Cheap kicks? 

He can maybe think Hux would be sadistic enough to play with someone like that, though he doesn’t know if the man has the emotional depth to fake attachment. As for Kylo... he knew Ben. Once. A long time ago. He doesn’t know who this man is, who wears a mask and pines after him. 

Hux’s voice is pulled apart at the edges, fraying in an attempt to stay level. “If you change your mind, in any small way... we would both welcome you back. In whatever capacity you feel comfortable with.”

Not exactly a declaration of love, but the man is pinched around his face as he says it.

“I won’t.” 

Hux nods, and the issue is closed. For now. It feels like it, anyway.

“Do you need anything?”

“Just privacy.”

“Very well. I shall leave. I did tell Kylo that bringing you there was a bad idea... he’s learned his lesson, now.”

“Yeah. Well. Thanks for nothing.”

Hux leaves, and Poe is alone.

***

Poe can’t even remember if he’s gay or straight or bi or what. How do you remember something like that? If he tries to think about guys, his mind slides to the General and the Knight, and then he baulks in horror. 

He tries to think about women, and there’s a slight stirring, but without a specific female in mind, he can’t focus properly.

And he is so not going to try to find porn on the First Order’s network. No siree. 

Nothing really adds up. It would be one hell of a ruse to fake a past relationship, especially with two people. It would take an enormous amount of personal involvement to make it real, and to what end?

They could just fuck him, if they wanted to. Unless they don’t get off on someone entirely unwilling. Unless the strange ‘seduction’ is the point, but both of them seemed contrite (and unsurprised) to hear he’d been a fly on the wall during their last session.

If he – if they really were – he can... sort of see how they’d miss him. Right? Because having a loved one forget you entirely, forget all your interactions... Poe tries to imagine what that would be like, and it isn’t pleasant. To think all your history could be wiped, and only one (or two) parties could recall it... 

If it is a game, it’s so far beyond sick that he doesn’t want to consider it. It’s tantamount to seduction by deception, and it’s... it’s...

What if it was real, once? What if he did love them both? Could he even? Kylo, he’d always felt close to. Or Ben, anyway. They’d been pulled apart plenty of times, but they’d always lit up like a hyperdrive engine when they got back together. What he is now... Poe doesn’t know.

Hux, however... he’s something else entirely. Poe has barely had time to know him, and so far all he can tell is the man has manners, is well-spoken, and the more level-headed of them. Driven, ambitious, and devoted to his job. 

Which includes the mass slaughter of Resistance fighters, and the pursuit of a political end that makes Poe’s teeth itch. 

He can’t understand how he’d ever buy into their ideology. How could he think that xenophobia and anti-democratic movements were the way? His family had lived – and died – for the cause. Why would he just overturn that, and run away?

And who can he ask who will tell him objectively, in a way he can understand?

‘Hello, I want to know why I went – in my current frame of reference – evil.’

Yeah. No.

He hopes to hell he won’t have to deal with more mental holo-porn tonight, though then there’s a flicker of envy, too.

And that’s odd. He has nothing to envy, other than the fact they seem to enjoy one another’s company. Wanting companionship and affection isn’t wrong, but this is deeper than that.

Then he wonders if there’s a limit to how long they’ll tolerate his reticence to sign back up with the Order before they use _their_ mind-wiping technology, and his heart hammers so hard in his chest that he calls out in distress.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, no. He can’t lose any more. He’ll just have to play nice, if not play along. Give them no reason to go into his skull any more than they already have (and are). 

If they wipe any more, there’ll be no Poe left to _be_.


	4. Chapter 4

They send him a shrink. Really? A shrink. Not that he has anything (much) against them. Not more than the average person has against them. But he’s not crazy, he’s been repeatedly tortured and mentally abused. 

That’s not _crazy_. And so he shouldn’t need to see her.

Because. He’s not. And also because she’s a _First Order_ shrink, so she’s going to tell him things Kylo and Hux want him to hear.

And that _so_ does not make him paranoid.

“Commander Dameron... may I have permission to use your given name?” she asks.

“What would you do if I said no?”

“I would respect that.”

He shrugs. “Then use whatever you want. Doesn’t matter to me.”

It kind of does. He’s _Poe_ to his friends, sure, but he’s also _Dameron_ to his workmates. And his workmates are closer than friends. Both names feel like they’re private, with only the rank being... the...

He realises he’s spaced out for a moment when he sees her expression. Shit. Did she say something? He tries to run back the reel in his mind, but he can’t pick out anything he was supposed to respond to. He’d been so close, so close to finding something. The memory of _team_ had sparked a feeling in his gut.

_Why would the Resistance make him a Commander? Why would they put him in charge of all those pilots? Was he ever in charge, or did they pretend, knowing he felt the urge to lead in his blood and he wouldn’t accept anyone’s yoke?_

“Commander,” he blurts out. “I’d prefer Commander. No name. Just that.”

It’s a common thread in both truths. Even if his name is, too, she isn’t close enough to deserve it. Maybe no one is.

“Very well, Commander. I am Doctor Manosk. You may call me either.”

“What about ‘Doc’?” Because he figures he should ask, seeing as she asked first. And as it might feel like he’s diminishing her training, which is likely extensive. He doesn’t want to disrespect her, even if he doesn’t want to talk to her in the first place.

“That’s fine.”

Poe sits on one of the couches, remembering the last (and only real) visitors he’s had here. 

Yeah. No. File that away. File the uncomfortable, prickly sensation deep inside, where he can hopefully make it die. He watches her – Human, as all the Order’s personnel are – sit perfectly prim, proper, precise. Not a hair or seam is out of place.

(Why is it always Humans, with these guys? Poe has no issues with non-Human species. None. He couldn’t imagine ever siding with someone who--)

“What do you think these sessions are for?” she asks.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell _me_ that?”

There’s a pause, in which he supposes he’s supposed to Think About What He’s Done. Mostly, he wants her to go away. Or pass him as fit for duty, and give him the flight clearance codes for a TIE-Interceptor. Or –Advance. Something with a hyperdrive, because he can fly _anyth—_

_A helmet. White. Black. Familiar, and not. His reflection in the visor, warped out of shape. A face underneath it all. Surprise._

_It’s the right thing to do._

_Even that was a lie._

_He didn’t mind, at the time. Survival made you open-minded. Forgiveness a property inside his chest. Something known, in his bones. Understanding that any man under a mask could be—_

“We’re here to help you. I need to understand where you are, and where you want to be.”

That’s a loaded statement and a half. Who knows who they are, where they are, and what they want? Truly?

“As you’re aware, I’m on a First Order Star Destroyer. And where I want to be? Is in a starfighter cockpit.” Either kind. He’d need the TIE first. He could decide what next after.

“I’d like to know what you recall.”

“Well, I know my name. Is that enough for a week?” Her endless calm is maddening.

“Don’t you have a goal you’d like to work to?”

Yes. Finding out what the hell happened to me, he thinks. She has to... “What did they tell you?”

“That you had trauma-related amnesia.”

“Right. You know, the kind of trauma they put the troops here, through?”

“What do you know of that system?”

Oh, she’s ‘good’. Asking questions. Turning things back on him. Trying to make him engage, trying to define what he knows before she commits. “I know it happens.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t! I don’t know how I know. I just do. Don’t you have things you don’t remember learning?” He’s getting angry with her, and it’s not her fault. But he can’t help the swelling feeling of helplessness that blazes through him: putting anger in his fists, and then cuffing them behind his back.

He doesn’t like to feel angry. It isn’t what he likes to consider himself as, someone who gets angry. Someone with a temper, even if it’s normal. He doesn’t like—

 _I can’t do this_.

_Big, big brown eyes in a fear-pale face. Poe looks up at his friend, and his heart hurts. He sees the agony, there. Sees the terror, sees the lingering beast behind his shoulders. Ben is **good** , but Ben is also **angry**. Ben can’t calm in meditation, and the more he tries, the more he struggles. The more he panics. The more he withdraws._

_He’s avoided him for weeks, now. Not even giving him a reason to blow off their ‘play’ dates that have turned more into just – well – someone they can confide in. Someone who knows them. Someone who is away from their respective spheres._

_Ben, with his Jedi uncle, his Jedi friends, his Jedi training._

_Poe, with his pilot training, his flying, but his... his... how empty it all was, without his best friend._

_I can’t do this. I—_

_What?_

_I’m... I’m not **good,** Poe. I’m... I get..._

**_Angry_ ** _. He won’t say it, but it’s there in the clench of his jaw. In the way his breath stays a little too long in his lungs. In the prickle of static along the back of Poe’s neck. Angry. Emotional. Afraid._

_The things Ben’s told him in the dark._

_He takes hold of Ben’s hand in his, rubbing over the back of it. Trying to work out the rage, trying to give him heat, grounding, safety. Ben’s fist doesn’t unfasten this time, and the anger feels so much bigger. Poe doesn’t have the Force, but he knows his friend. He knows he’s terrified out of his mind – the whites of his eyes are lagoons of misery – and he knows he would be afraid, too._

_Have you told him?_

_How can I?_

_Maybe he can help._

_He says the meditation will help, and that I have to—_

_His hand pulls away, and Poe feels the distance between them like it’s every day, and they’re split into their own, separate worlds. They’re supposed to be together, when they manage to meet up. Now he doesn’t even have this, and the jealous ache makes him hate himself, too._

_Ben is no worse than he is. Ben is just – **normal** – so why should this be a problem?_

_He wants to scream, because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s blind to the Force, just like his Ma and Pa. He’s not of Ben’s world. He can’t... **it’s just so unfair**._

“The trooper conditioning plan works on them from their birth, their assignment, or their defection,” Poe relates, the words tripping out dully. The anger is gone somewhere, locked away where he can’t feel it. It’s grown so big that it’s outside of him, and he can no longer connect with it.

Like when you fly your bird close to the edge, and you _know_ where death is. You know how close it is, you know how a single breath wrong will slam you into a bolt, a torpedo, a hull. You know a bank too sharp, or not sharp enough, and you’re gone. 

You know, and you no longer care. It’s beyond that. It’s survival mode, and your whole core goes numb.

Something _Ben_ could never manage, much to his annoyance. Something Poe knew all too well. 

“You have been through some very traumatic experiences, Commander. Extremely trying, and disorientating. I’d like to help you balance your gyroscope.”

It’s a clumsy attempt to relate, though he does appreciate the effort. She says the word with a little vocal pressure, not letting it slide in as if a normal part of her conversational vocabulary. He notices, and it jars him for a moment. 

“No offence, Doc, but I’m still pretty sure you’re all trying to brainwash me.”

“We are.”

Wait? His brows arch, confused.

“Brainwashing returns you to your true mind,” she explains, calmly. “Conditioning trains false layers. We want to help you find the real Commander Dameron.”

“How can I believe that? You’re invested in me staying, aren’t you?”

“I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“Means you’re not impartial, so I can’t trust you,” he points out. “You could be lying through your teeth to me. Hell, you might even _believe_ what you say because a Dark Jedi told you what to think.”

“Would you like to discuss what makes you think that the Lord Ren and General Hux are deceiving you? Or what makes you feel like you’re missing from the Resistance?”

“So you can use it to focus your – whatever you want to call it – to force me to think what you want?”

She shrugs. “You can lead these sessions. We work out how we want to progress them. It has to be something you’re willing to undertake... and I assume you’d rather know the truth?”

And alone, is he going to get it? 

“Do you report back to them?”

“Only in the abstract. I can – and will – keep anything private you ask me to.”

“You can’t promise that. Kylo can read your mind.”

She thinks, then nods. “True, but anything he can get from my mind, he can get from yours. So you are better having someone you can control the flow of information with, and my assistance. With your permission, I will schedule in sessions with you. You can either come to them with a topic, a memory, or a question. If you cannot think of anything, I will use active question-posing to help us find a topic to discuss.”

Am I crazy? Does this make me crazy? Am I mad? Why do I keep being paralyzed by pointless, unanchored memories? Who fucked my head worst? Can I even find it out? All these questions and more rage through his head, but he’s had enough for today. It’s hard enough admitting he needs help than detailing _what_.

She’s company. And she’s the closest thing to someone he can trust he’s got, which is saying something. “I’ll think about it.”

“I’ll send my details on, you can refer yourself in, or we can just talk about other things. You seem to be stuck, here. I can help.”

“Look, I don’t mean to sound ungrateful and all, but—“

“It’s okay. I understand.” Doc Manscok nods. “There is always difficulty retrieving yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll give you my details,” she reiterates. “I do have some other clients, but if you need me to be on-hand, for all hours, I can arrange that.”

A _shrink_ on _call out_ for him? Wow. No. He doesn’t want to think he needs it. His smile is thin-lipped, lying, _angry._ “Thanks.”

For nothing.

He’s not crazy. The situation is.


	5. Chapter 5

_Poe dreams of the open sky. Of gunning up through and beyond the spin of a planet on its axis. Of feeling the resistance judder through the stick. Throttling, easing, feeling the G-forces push his organs lower in his abdominal cavity. The sharp sting of too-pure air. His body stretches out into his craft, the wings extensions of his will. Higher, faster, bank, bank, dive, soar, shear..._

Abruptly, he’s jolted to consciousness in a stab like an ejector seat finally kicking in. The light is low – for the nominal ‘night’ cycle – but he can see the ragged figure at the foot of his bed like something out of a nightmare. Tall, looming, frayed at the edges...

His hands scramble for a weapon that isn’t there, and then the figure comes closer.

“Kylo?”

He can see the contours of his profile, now. The way the mad crown is his tumbling hair. The way his shoulders crest like a fretted sea, and the clothing that drapes around him is all asymmetrical nearly-ruins. 

“I’m sorry.” His voice is subdued, but in a way that only takes out volume, not emotion. It’s even more distressed than his clothing is, and he sways harshly. “I tried to stay away. I did.”

“Kylo... what time is it?”

“Late.”

Poe had figured as much. He isn’t going to get back to sleep easily now, not with his heart pounding like it is. He sits up a bit higher in the bed, pulling the covers up to almost his ears. He’s wearing clothes, but he still doesn’t like the idea of being seen in bed by someone he... doesn’t... know that well.

“Did you come to ask me something?”

“...don’t... don’t you remember me at all?”

Seriously. In the middle of the night. He’s broken into his room to ask him questions. If this is some fucked up method to extract sleepy concessions from him... “I remember before. Way before. And then there’s a big gap until you tortured me for information.”

Kylo makes a tiny, hurt sound, then. “I would never.”

“Really? Just because I was – what – your fuck buddy?”

“You were never...” Kylo stops, the words catching on his tongue.

“Never what?”

“You... we meant something, Poe. And now he’s tortured it all out of you. I look at you, and I see the man I love. You look at me...”

And see a mask. An eyeless, faceless plate. See pain, and suffering. See a childhood almost lost to gusty memory. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” 

If it’s true – and Kylo seems to act like he believes it, because he’s not sure the man is capable of that much guile – he can appreciate how it must feel. To be near someone you love, who can’t love you back. Who has lost all your time together. It must be like loving someone with dementia, and Poe feels guilt gnaw at him.

“Can’t you just stick with Hux? You seem to like him plenty.”

That obviously hurts, because Kylo recoils. “Poe, please... you don’t understand.”

“No, I obviously don’t. The last I remember, your ears were as big as your feet. I mean – other than the thing you say isn’t real. So how am I supposed to feel when you break into my room at night?”

“I just missed you.” He sounds defensive, angry, almost. His head lifts, his jaw angled furiously towards him. “I wasn’t trying to get into your bed. Well. Maybe just to hold you.”

Seriously? “Why would I want to let you do that – after the last thing I remember?”

“Put yourself in my shoes.” He’s pleading openly, now, bleeding out emotion like a faulty drive core. “Poe, please don’t shut me out. I’ll – I’ll start from scratch if I have to. I know you can still love me. I know it.”

“It isn’t ‘still’, not for me!”

“You said you remembered before. How _much_ of before?”

Not enough. Snippets. The selected, edited highlights, like holo-cards sent home from vacations away. A sense of something below, but only clarity on the highest peaks so far, breaking through the clouds. “Bits and pieces.”

“...up til...?”

“I dunno. I remember young. But. I can’t tell what’s... I can’t tell if any of it is real. You could be putting it all into my head to make me believe...”

“Poe! I would never!”

“Because I’m your – whatever? I bet you’ve done it to the Resistance. And as I still feel like I _am_ Resistance...”

Kylo turns, walks over to the wall, his back to Poe. There’s a sudden flash of red, which is when Poe realises he’s pulled out his blade.

_I can’t do this._

_You can, Ben._

_I can’t. I can’t. I’ve tried, and I’ve tried, and I can’t._

_Anger that he can feel without the Force, rage and fear and panic and fury. The room shakes, the boy unable to keep it bottled up any longer._

_What do we do?_

He’s dragged back from the memory by a hand on his shoulder, gently rocking him. The saber is unlit again, and the look of horror on Kylo’s face would be difficult to fabricate. Difficult, but not impossible.

“I’m fine,” he lies, forcing his voice not to wobble as much as he feels his insides are currently doing. It’s like being drugged, almost, and the distress of not-knowing is taking its toll on his system. When will he know? When will he be certain? When will he be able to trust anyone – anyone?

The hand releases him, withdraws. Pulls back, and smoothes at black fabric. “Hux is already mad at me, anyway.”

What? “Why?”

“ _You_.”

A man who can’t even remember the relationship they supposedly are in... “How does it even work?”

“How does what work?”

“You... Hux...” Me.

“Sometimes I ask myself the same question.” Kylo’s tone is wry. “It didn’t. To begin with. We were a couple, and Hux was... Hux was an annoyance.”

“Still seems to be.”

“Quite. You... you suggested... taking the edge off our rivalry might assist, and so...”

He doesn’t recall them being an item, but envy shocks through him at the idea of being... well. _Him_. Hux daring to think he could share something, even at Poe’s suggestion. Poe’s never known (or remembered) himself as a jealous, possessive man, but the sudden annoyance over a relationship he can’t remember is disturbing in its intensity.

“Uhuh.” What else can he say?

“You weren’t happy about it then, either. And neither was I.” 

The Knight’s hand goes to his hip, and Poe winces. 

“So why did I suggest it?”

“You... I could... I could show you?”

Poe recoils in outright horror, shaking his head.

“I... it’s just a memory, Poe. It happened.”

“Yeah, but...” He wants to know. Right? He does. “Okay. But what if I need you to stop?”

“Think it. Think _stop._ Really loud.”

A nod, and he braces himself.

***

“Are you ever going to tell me the truth?”

“What?”

Poe’s whole ribcage hurts like he’s gone three rounds with a Wookie. With his hands tied behind his back. His words keep bubbling up and dying into sighs and growls, but he has to – _has to –_ discuss it, once and for all.

“Hux.”

“What did he do to you, now?”

“ _Nothing_ , Ky. Nothing. I mean, short of assigning me to evermore life-threatening missions... it’s not me he’s got the problem with, is it?”

“He... doesn’t... like the Force.”

Poe snorts. That is the dumbest excuse for the shitty-ass, petty-minded grievances Hux seems to play out that he’s ever heard. In fact, it just makes him even more cross with the whole situation.

“He’s jealous.”

“Of the Force,” Kylo replies.

“Of _you_.”

And Kylo is so stupidly, painfully blind. He doesn’t see that all the sniping and posturing, the attempts to belittle both him and Poe, the missions and the briefings and the everything is just a really, really ineffectual way at expressing desire, does he?

For all his boyfriend is supposedly in tune with the Dark Side, rooted in emotion... there’s times he can’t see beyond his own, long nose. 

“What?” Kylo asks.

“He wants you. Maybe because he can’t _have_ you, or maybe because he likes you, and he’s angry with himself for it.”

“...you’re not making any sense at all, Poe.”

“Why don’t you just... get it out of your system. Both of you.”

“Poe... I’m not—”

“You’re always defending him, when you’re not calling him every name under every sun. Don’t you think I know you enough to know what you want?” He does. That’s the most tragic part. Kylo wants someone who _craves_ his degradation, whose very idea for flirtation is to put him down so far he can’t say no. 

And sure, he loves Poe. He loves Poe, but he... _wants_ and _needs_ Hux. 

“I love _you_ ,” his Knight insists.

“Which is why... I’ve thought about it, and it’s okay.”

“It’s okay to _cheat_ on you?”

“Pretty sure it’s only cheating if I didn’t give you permission, first.” Yep. Otherwise it’s just an alternative view on monogamy (or not). 

“You don’t even want me to do it?”

“You think it’s nice to know my boyfriend doesn’t find me enough?” Poe laughs, and it’s bitter as purest caf after a fourteen-hour flying jag. “But I love you. And you need this. And maybe things will settle down, if you...”

“Poe... I’m not going to...”

But he will. Poe knows he will. He can see the drawn look around Kylo’s eyes, the convulsive swallowing of his throat. He knows Kylo wants this, knows he craves it, and knows the idea won’t leave his head.

***

The connection breaks, and the emotion doesn’t. He looks up to see the Knight, pale and hurting. He hurts, too. He remembers how he’d felt, and how he’d felt _for_ him. He’d been so in love, so in love he was prepared to let Kylo hurt him just to ensure his lover was happy.

“So, you were seeing both of us?”

“...no. Yes. Sort of.”

“It was just sex with Hux?”

“...we all thought so. And... you were there. I insisted. I couldn’t, without you there, too.”

Wow. So he got to see his boyfriend being used and abused. It’s... he can’t stop imagining it, stop remembering how it felt to endure their lusts played against one another the other night. Prim, proper Hux and wild, ragged Kylo. Control and fury. Hux’s expression breaking in extremis, Kylo howling in bliss.

His dick, treacherously, lifts.

“I love you,” Kylo pleads with him to understand. “I never, ever stopped. It’s just... I loved him a bit, too. And we wanted it to be... we wanted it to just be venting steam, but...”

“He loves you?”

“I don’t know. I h—I think so. But he has feelings for you, too.”

“...right.”

Kylo squirms. “He’s not very forward about them. He’s always been jealous that you ‘got’ me first, but he – he... wanted the best for us, even... look, I don’t know. I don’t like to pry, and he doesn’t like to say.”

“Did I ever fuck him? Or him, me?”

Kylo’s nod is almost imperceptible.

Poe does not remember. He doesn’t remember, but he can imagine. Pale, sure hands. Sucking lips. Would Hux deign to go down on him? Would he flicker out that elegant tongue? Burnt sienna, camouflaged in red hair. 

_Fuck_ he needs to stop thinking like this. It’s Kylo’s fault. 

“You just had sex with him, didn’t you?” he accuses.

Kylo does not answer directly. “I’ve been trying not to, so I don’t... affect you.”

“Right.”

“I miss you. And I don’t even mean the sex. I miss... I miss being able to come home to you. Crawl into bed with you. Just... just knowing I’m—”

Kylo bolts in panic, but the word echoes in his head all the same.

Safe. _Safe_. Poe used to make him feel safe.

He rolls over, trying to ignore the throbbing weight between his thighs. Trying to keep his mind away from wondering how it would feel to receive head from either of them. Precise, military licks... or raw, slobbery, love-drunk ones. 

Poe shoves his head into his pillow and _yells_ out the air, needing the thoughts to stop.  


	6. Chapter 6

Poe knows that Hux will come to see him, as requested. He doesn’t know if he’ll keep it from Kylo, or even if he can. But sometimes you gotta take a leap of faith, and this is his.

Hux pricks his way through the room like it’s distasteful, and Poe can’t help but watch his movement, his face. Looking for those things Kylo wasn’t sure about in the micro-expressions around the melody of his disgust.

“You asked to see me?”

“Yeah. I got a proposal for you.”

That catches his interest, and the man turns. “Go on.”

“I’m no use to you, right now. I’m not reliable enough to put in a ship. I’m a drain on your resources, and I pull Kylo’s focus.”

He watches confusion give way to realisation. “No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m suggesting!”

“If it involves faking your death, or simply allowing you to ‘go’, even if you promise to remain neutral, it will still be a: ‘no’.”

Poe runs his tongue over his palette, hard. Traces the shape behind his teeth, and then forces his breathing to level. “It makes the most sense. I’m never going to feel at home here, not now.”

“Ren would never speak to me again.”

“If I wasn’t around, he’d have to.”

Poe is surprised, however, that Kylo’s feelings come into it for Hux. Even if it is just ‘I won’t get laid because the date mate will hate me’. In all senses but emotional, it’s logic to get rid of him. Not to expend time and effort on something that might not ever trust them. And he doesn’t know the man enough to know what his emotional core is like, to know if his heart is involved in his decision making in any way, shape, or form.

“I am not giving up on you,” Hux says, curtly. “Do you even know the resources we have put in to your recovery? No. You don’t. You’re as emotionally hair-trigger as our mutual acquaintance. Both of you fire first, and think second.” 

There’s no small amount of aggression bleeding through Hux’s tones. All in his voice, his face. His stance remains as stiff as a board.

Is it just for Kylo? Or for himself?

Poe needs to know. “What am I, even, to you?”

“I don’t have to answer that.”

“Why not? If you think I should come back, shouldn’t I know what to? From what Kylo’s told me, you and he have chemistry, and I happen to let it happen.”

It’s a low blow, designed to see how he responds. It’s with open (if briefly so) hurt. A flashfire over his features, into the vacuum of his indifferent face. “You are very important to Lord Ren.”

“You don’t even call him Kylo.”

He should maybe not needle the man so much, but he kind of feels he should. Also. Like an irresistible itch to scratch. He has to pick at it until his nails are bloody, and examine the mess below.

“He understands how we are,” Hux brushes off.

“Does he? Because last night he came crying to me, and saying how he didn’t even know what you felt, but that you’d—”

“Enough.” Hux rises, and his expression is pale, but for blood streaks over the bones of his cheeks. 

“You want me to stay, and undo everything I think I believe, and you won’t even tell me what it is you’re asking me to _stay for_?”

“Isn’t he enough?”

“Not if I have to share, obviously.” Poe doesn’t stand, but he has to fight his urge to do so.

“We have an acceptable arrangement. You two are—” a wordless hand-gesture. “And sometimes I am involved.”

“So we don’t even share a bed?”

“Most nights. What – precisely – are you trying to ask me?”

He’s said what he wants, and Hux is so up himself he won’t even answer. “Why didn’t you just let me get killed, or never captured? Can’t you handle Kylo’s emotional intensity, or did you just think you’d lose him forever if I wasn’t around to—”

Hux slaps him right across the jaw, the soft leather doing little to counter the sting. His cheek bites against his teeth, his head snapping to one side. _Interesting_.

“Why should I tell a stranger what we do?”

“Because you apparently want the stranger to stop being strange. Either I’m who you remember, or I’m someone else. If I’m someone else, for fuck’s sake, let me go and don’t keep me on a chain like this.” Poe’s pleading, but this is torture. It really is. 

“You think this is easy for me? You think I’m over the moon that you don’t recognise me, and I have to walk on eggshells around you? You think I _want_ to have – to – be around someone who doesn’t...”

Fuck. There’s emotion in _his_ tone, too. It’s not the fuck-buddy upset. It’s not even mutual-fuck-buddy upset. Why the hell does Kylo think this man doesn’t _feel_? What is he so oblivious to? Hux – for all he’s walling himself tightly – is as blatant in his own ways as Kylo, once you poke him with a sharp enough stick.

“What is it you want from me?” Poe asks. “Really. What is it both of you want me to come back to? Why aren’t you enough together, without me?”

“Because... because I won’t _lie_ and say I don’t get more attention from Kylo when you aren’t around, but that was never our arrangement. It was never him and me, and you and him. It was...” Hux swallows, his throat working over saliva. “It is much more... complicated and... layered. Than that.”

“You love him?”

“How dare you?”

“Ask you if you love my supposed boyfriend?”

“Ask me if I care for _either of you_.” Hux’s lips curl away from his teeth, a flash of dangerous white. “I want... things back as they were. Is that so wrong of me?”

“Why doesn’t Kylo know?”

“Maybe because that idiot boy is still convinced you don’t even love him? You loved him enough to allow me in to share your bed, and he thought that meant you were disappointed in him, that he wasn’t _enough_ for you. Kylo doesn’t _accept_ what we feel for him. And now you’re here, not even remembering him, and I have to deal with him breaking apart every night, and you looking at me like you wish I was dead.”

Okay, this was supposed to be about him leaving, not... not this. Guilt crawls around in his core, making a nest of his guts, pulling arteries clear of his heart to guzzle and glug. Poe is dying from the inside out, and he can’t even remember why.

“And what if I never remember? You really want me around, when I look at you and see the enemy? Or at Kylo and see the boy I knew, or the man who _tortured me_?”

Hux looks like he wants to punch him, or run away, or do both. He’s as torn as Kylo was, and this... why would he lie? Why would they go to such an elaborate ruse?

He could see Kylo – perhaps – pining after a love once lost, or pining after someone he’d wanted to love. But Hux... would have to be one sick son of a bitch to want to make Poe like him. If he really is genuine with Kylo, then inviting a third party in would just make things less stable, and...

“Give us a chance,” Hux asks, finally. “Please. Come to dinner with us. Just dinner. Spend... the evening, but not the night. See we’re not the monsters you thought we were. Allow yourself to remember us, as slowly as you need to. Or... _get_ to know us. Kylo is broken without you, and... your... presence has always... always been...”

Nope. That’s why Kylo isn’t sure. The man has no emotional vocabulary. He just can’t do it, can he? Hux is utterly incapable of frank and sincere speech.

“Why can’t you tell me what you really want?”

“Because – if you haven’t noticed – you’ll either ridicule me, or disbelieve me. Why... should I put my heart out there?”

“Because you’re asking _me_ to?”

Hux’s teeth must be close to a fine paste. “Come to dinner. Let... let... us... show you. How it can be. How... we can work. Together.” A pause. “ **Please**.”

What does he have to lose? He’s stuck here, and he has to get his answer, one way or another. He can’t stay cooped up here forever. After a moment, he nods.

Okay.

***

Kylo meets him at the door. Poe is kind of expecting an armed escort (he can’t shake the feeling of being a prisoner, even in the lush surroundings), and not a man dressed up to finery.

Kylo’s wearing shades of charcoal, black, and blue so dark as to almost be black, too. His clothing is stiffly formal, and Poe wonders if it’s new for his benefit. The Knight doesn’t look comfortable in it, after all. 

Poe is just wearing whatever was in the closet. It’s not like it’s really his wardrobe, after all. He did have a shower and a shave, but that’s the limit of his effort for this.

Of course, when he arrives, Hux is wearing a formal shirt (not uniform, but close) and the table in his dining area is set with finery. Which is really how to woo him... _not_. Is it that Hux doesn’t know what Poe likes, or did his previous self find all this ridiculous obsession with protocol and tableware appealing?

His heart sinks, and he feels the man escorting him pull back physically. “I _told you_.”

“We’re trying to make a good impression, Ren!” Hux snaps.

“For who, an officer? Last time I checked, the only rank I had was to command pilots into death-defying missions,” Poe replies, with more weariness than aggravation. 

“Fine. I’ll stop trying to be nice, then,” Hux bites off.

And then Poe realises... this is _Hux’s_ version of nice. It’s not designed to appease Poe, it’s designed because this is what Hux believes a pleasant, respectful evening should consist of. And – well. A little pity moves inside him for the effort he’s rebuffing.

“Gotta remember I lost all my manners in the wipe,” he says, with a soft smile. “Gonna need to show me which fork is which.”

“You start from the outside and work in,” Kylo explains. “Your drink is on the right, and your side plate is on the left.”

“...uhuh. And is there some kind of rule about... chairs? Or... standing and sitting, or...” He wracks his memory. “Decanters touching, or not touching the table?”

“We can go with ‘don’t talk with your mouth full’ and ‘don’t point cutlery’ and work up from there on the next date,” Hux suggests. He’s mellowed a little, now they’re accepting his overtures. Still prickly, but marginally less so.

“I’m not a complete heathen,” Poe says, as Kylo pulls out a chair for him to sit.

It’s a bit weird, being treated so nicely by two people. Hux has clearly put a lot of thought into this, and Kylo’s gone to the effort of scrubbing up for him, and all Poe’s done is agree to let them – what – woo him?

He sits at the table, trying not to fidget. Kylo looks just as out of place, and he finds himself sharing a secret, knowing glance when Hux isn’t looking. 

“Just like old times,” Kylo whispers. “Before.”

“Before?”

“The formal meals we’d have to go to. Because of our... you know.”

No, not really. He doesn’t remember those, but perhaps it’s a blessing. Especially considering how many fucking knives he’s supposed to handle. Who needs this many different versions of the same tool?

“I had them make your favourite dishes,” Hux tells him. “Or, what used to be them. I assume your palate hasn’t changed, even if you may have forgotten eating them.”

“Probably can’t torture that out of a guy, right?” Poe quips, a little weakly. And then looks longingly at the wine for three seconds, which is all it takes for the other over-attentive host to pour him some.

“So... how was your day?” he asks, and takes a big gulp. He needs it. Badly.


	7. Chapter 7

Three glasses of wine in (although it’s likely more, as Kylo tops it up faster than he finishes, so maybe it’s five, or even six) and Poe realises they’re not the worst company to have.

Watching them talk is like watching an old married couple. They snipe points of order back and forth, debating on the finest hairpoint definition of a topic, squabbling and disagreeing, without ever turning nasty. He doesn’t join in until it’s a topic he’s sure enough about to hold his own water, but even then he feels hideously out-classed.

Kylo is every inch his mother’s son. He has that sharpness to his mind and tongue, a politician’s turn of phrase. His speech elevates in register around Hux, like it’s the very air his mouth was made to shape. Hux – well. Poe doesn’t know enough, but he suspects the man’s meteorically young rise to his rank is due to more than just genetics. You just don’t become General this young without some serious ability.

Poe nurses his glass (keeping it away from Kylo’s clever, re-filling fingers) and then rocks his chair onto its back legs. “C’n I ask something?”

Both turn, and it’s Hux who nods first. Which is interesting.

“How... did we all meet?” He gestures with the wine glass. “I think I remember... s’Ben... tree?”

“Yes, the tree,” Kylo agrees, a little stiffly. 

But it’s true, he _had_ been Ben. That was a point of order, or something.

“But... us and Hux?”

“Well, you’d been around a lot. You... can I speak of things without causing some problem with recall?” Hux asks, glancing between them. “It won’t affect things negatively?”

“I don’t see how it can. It might help him remember,” Kylo answers.

“I get...” The pilot waves a hand – the one with the wine in – around his head. “Flashes. Memories. Blurry, some. Longer... doesn’t seem to have a... pattern.”

“From what I understand, you were eighteen, or thereabouts, and Kylo was... sixteen?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen, when you came over. I didn’t really pay much attention to either of you, though I did know the Supreme Leader thought Kylo was vital to his plan. We... met very briefly and occasionally, right until you were stationed together on the _Finalizer_. Roughly five years ago.”

Okay. There’s a big gap. He’s definitely not twenty-three any more, though he can’t quite pin down how old he actually _is_ , for some reason. He glances over to Kylo for some more detail.

“You insisted we wait until I was eighteen,” he supplies, reading the request.

“So you could join the Dark Side, but you weren’t old enough to—”

Kylo nods. 

Poe feels a little cold. How could someone not even old enough to get drunk or have sex be able to switch sides and join an army? But that’s not dinner-table conversational material. It does mean that they both moved over before they were intimate, so he knows it can’t have been sex that pulled him here.

Especially if he waited from whenever they felt the pull until Kylo was legal. It does sound like something he’d do, though. The waiting thing.

“So... we’re... dating...”

“And you’re stationed wherever Kylo goes,” Hux supplies.

“And... then we meet you?”

“I wasn’t impressed with getting either of you,” Hux admits. “Lord Ren – as we knew him – was elevated because of his Force powers, and beholden to no one but the Supreme Leader. A constant challenge to my authority. And you... you were his pet pilot. It caused dissension amongst the ranks, to have you there, inviolate. Protected by your relationship with Kylo.”

“And no matter how much I asked you to step back from the front lines, you wouldn’t,” Kylo complains. “You said you couldn’t give it up.”

“So you hated us?” Poe asks.

“...more... active, intense dislike?” Hux tries for, diplomatically.

“He hated us,” Kylo confirms.

“...I had my reasons. For one, I could not be convinced of your loyalty. You had both come from Rebellion families, and I resented your use of the Force as a... shortcut.”

Kylo snorts into his wine glass. This is clearly an old issue.

“I didn’t know what your training entailed, did I?” Hux asks, defensively.

“No. I’ll grant that much.”

Poe wonders what said training does entail. “How long before... uh... things changed?”

“Four years ago.”

Interesting. A year of getting to know one another, mutual antagonism, and then... “Ever since?”

“Give or take a few weeks, yes.”

Four years. Four years with three of them, and who knew how many with just Kylo, but at least ten. No wonder they’re upset with him for not remembering. And seriously, if they plan on faking a decade worth of memories for this? 

Poe sits back, the chair balancing precariously on the edge of falling. He likes that sensation, always has. It’s the inside of his mind, right now, like a finger could push him to either extreme. Safety, or danger. Or is it danger, and other danger? 

“I want... to see.”

“...what?”

“I want to know. What... you remember. What... we are. Or what you say we are.” He doesn’t. He does. He wishes his head would resolve, but all he has are gappy holes and flashes of thoughts that could be daydreams as much as they could be real. At least the things Kylo shows him feel more like they’re genuine, and even if they’re not, the platitude of them is a reassurance of a sort.

The two exchange even more heated glances, and Hux – eventually – shrugs. “Can’t hurt, can it?”

“...alright.”

***

Poe opens the door to their rooms, helmet slung on his hip, too tired to undress from his flight gear fully before he wanders home. It’s late, by ship standards. The mission took longer than expected, but he’s finally back. He cracks his head to one side, easing out the tension, and smiles into the room. 

Hux is reclining elegantly on the couch, a glass of wine in one hand, a datapad in the other. His thumb slides through the data, and his bare feet lie across Kylo’s lap. 

It’s this fact, more than anything, that makes him pay attention. Hux rarely bares his feet, except for when they’re going to bed. He’s probably been ready to sleep for a while, now, but kept up for him. Hux twitches his toes idly, and he looks up with a weirdly warm smile. “Did all go well?”

“Sure did,” Poe replies, putting his helmet next to Kylo’s. He walks over, and steals a kiss from the Knight. 

He doesn’t get long to finish up before he’s clucked at, and he sees Hux’s face lifted expectantly, too. Warmth in his belly at the domesticity of his lovers, relaxing and waiting for him to come home for dinner. He kisses Hux, and tastes fine wine.

Hux lets him pull away, and he starts to strip from the jumpsuit. Mostly to get out of the bulkier clothing, and to get the day job off his shoulders. “What’re we having?”

“Steak,” Kylo says, his eyes dragging over Poe’s frame. “You hungry?”

“ _Famished_.”

***

He’s glad it stops there. Not because – well – it _would_ be uncomfortable watching them do anything further, but because the overwhelming sense of _home_ makes him sick for it. 

_The First Order will not be intimidated by—_

**_The Resistance._ ** __

_The **First Order.**_

**_The Resistance._ **

_The mask looks like Kylo, but the voice doesn’t sound quite right. His head is pounding, and he can taste something sharp and fruity stinging his throat. It isn’t Kylo, in the mask, and it is, and he’s so confused._

_He just wants to go home. He knows Kylo wouldn’t do this to him, even though the man is right there in front of him. He sounds wrong, but he looks right. His body-language is all off, and Poe can’t—_

“Poe?”

“...they... there was a mask, like...” A hand waves in front of his face, trying to get the concept across. His fingers near his mouth. “Like yours.”

Reality fades slowly back in, but the aftertaste is there, lingering on his tongue. He grabs his wine and gulps. 

He doesn’t process the hand on his shoulder as anything but reassuring, and when a boot strokes his instep, he shudders in relief that he’s safe. 

“Drugs. There were drugs. I could feel them.”

“Poe...” Kylo’s voice is breaking, and he looks like he’s about to shatter. “ _Please_.”

He’s not sure what he wants, but he nods. He finds out quickly, because Kylo launches sideways and grabs him in a hug, pulling him to his chest, against his neck. Poe goes stiff for a moment, then the heat, the... pressure, the smell that is oh-so-familiar seeps in. He breathes it in until his lungs hurt, and then lets it go.

“I’m going to kill the bastards who did this to you,” Hux growls, and the anger is chillingly real.

“I just want to remember,” Poe admits, and looks over Kylo’s shoulder to the blue eyes of the General. 

“We’ll help you. Whatever it takes. We want you _back_.”

Kylo’s arms scrunch tighter. “Whatever it takes,” he agrees. “You saved me, it’s time I returned the favour.”

Poe does not feel like he ever saved anyone. He doesn’t even know if...

“I... I need to ask...”

“What?” Kylo says, gently holding him to his arms’ length, in the process of letting go.

“...Starkiller? Did I dream that?”

The sudden pain on Hux’s face says not.

“It’s gone.”

So it was real.

“Did... did I...?”

The General’s head inclines. “...we believe so.”

He helped. He helped blow it up. He was – if they are telling the truth – likely the source of the information they used to find it. And either he sided with people who had built – and used – something capable of blowing up five planets filled with people... or the other team.

The other team, for which he’d killed... “How many souls?” Which isn’t contentious. They accept he did it.

Hux won’t tell him. Kylo holds his upper arm.

Poe can’t take any more. 

“I need to go back to my room, please.”

“Alright.” Kylo slides his chair back. “You don’t need to—”

“I kinda do.” How many deaths are on his hands? Neither side looks particularly rosy right now, even if the Resistance blew up a hostile base. It’s still a lot of death to account for. A lot.

And he’s the one accountable.

***

Poe doesn’t feel anything in the shower. He should.

He should feel disgust with himself, but instead? Numbness. It’s like someone’s stuck an icecream scoop in where his emotional core is, and removed every last trace of good – or bad – feeling. No guilt, just a clinical awareness that it’s needed.

It’s too big. It’s too _big_. How many people? So many that he could never learn all their names. That’s an unreal figure. He remembers – and apparently is corroborated in his memory – exploding it. Remembers whooping in victory, flying away from a dying world.

What the fuck is wrong with him? How could anyone – even in the face of not dying – celebrate that kind of mass slaughter? How could he think he was a ‘good guy’ and react like that? Surely if he was ‘good’ he’d have felt a bitter-sweet sorrow at it? Right?

Just what _is_ his kill count?

_The scan data from Snap's reconnaissance flight confirms Finn's report._

Was it? Was it Snap? What does he know about him, other than that he’s right there, in the room, when they talk about killing a planet themselves? The rest of the memories get fuzzy, and even now... he sees there’s gaps in his recall.

On Jakku. On the _Finalizer_. Nothing, until Takodana. D’Qar. A mission. Starkiller. Things get firmer after, that, right until he was shot down fighting the First Order. 

Even the narrative of his days after his ‘capture’ (whichever side captured him) don’t fully add up.

He blew up a planet. A planet.

He can’t be a good guy. Good guys wouldn’t do that.

And if they did, they’d feel something about it.

Right?


	8. Chapter 8

Poe can’t sleep. He can’t sleep. He can’t...

Over and over in his head. The wine and the good food sit alien in his stomach; even after being here for howeverlong, he can still taste the stew and strained food of the Resistance poor. He pounds the pillow with his fists, whips and turns, and eventually flops to the floor, pulling the covers down with him.

He could just... stop fighting. But he’s not sure he wants to.

Why not? He was happy, wasn’t he? He was happy here. He could be again, if he’d let himself be. They won’t ever let him loose, so he either accepts them, or lives as a pampered prisoner; stuck between two worlds, forever.

It’s not much of a choice. He just wishes he could feel the bits in between the snapshots he’s been given. They aren’t all cohesive, and... what did they do to him, to make him believe the wrong thing? His leg aches, suddenly, and he starts to rub when he hears the doorchime.

If he ignores it, will it—?

Nope. It bings softly again, demanding his attention. He knows Kylo understood his unhappiness at being broken in on last time, but it probably won’t stop him for long.

“Fine. Come in.”

It is, of course, Kylo. 

He isn’t wearing his mask. He’s still dressed from the party, and he looks like... fuck. He’s been crying. 

“Please don’t throw me out, too.”

“So I’m second best?”

“Poe... _please_. Just...”

Poe shrugs, non-committally. He doesn’t expect Kylo to drop to the floor beside him, all long limbs and mad hair. He keeps a few inches away, though he clearly doesn’t want to. His fingers reach out for the edge of the sheet half-wrapped around Poe, fussing it. 

“What did you fight about?” he asks, even though he knows, on one level, that it’s him.

“...how... how to get you to remember. I wanted to show you more things, and he said you should remember them when you’re ready, or ask... and even then he wasn’t sure.”

“Right.” Neither is he.

“Poe... I know you don’t understand, but... we’ve been in love for as long as I can remember. Before we even knew what it was. You were always there, with me, and... now you’re not, and it’s ripping me in two.”

“Why... did we leave?” That’s the unbelievable bit, to him. Not the love.

Because he can see – or thinks he can – a very real affection and a caring side to them both. Yes, even Hux. He can understand that relationship, but the First Order? They stand for everything bad, wrong, and regressive. And the _Dark Side_?

“I knew you would ask that, eventually. I’m... surprised you didn’t ask before,” Kylo confesses. 

“I wasn’t ready.”

“...so Hux was right? I’m... pushing you too much, and pushing you away?”

“I get it. I do... I mean, I want to know, too. So... I don’t think you’re pushing me away, but I think you want a level of intimacy I’m not comfortable with, right now.”

Kylo winces, but seems to accept it. “I’ll try to be more respectful. But I do need to know... what do you remember?”

“We were... friends from childhood. We spent a lot of time together. You... there was something that got you angry...”

“Do you remember learning to be a pilot?”

“Some of it. Bits and pieces.”

The flying memories are some of the best. He’s always known that he belongs in the black, it’s in his blood. It was in his mother’s blood, too. He remembers snippets of her, and his father.

“After... after your mother died, you became convinced it was your only goal. You trained every minute you could, and I... I was studying, but...” He tucks his hair behind his ear. “But the Supreme Leader was speaking to me. He was... showing me the error in my own training.”

“...as a Jedi?”

“Not to begin with, but he did show me the problems with what my family were teaching me.”

“With... what, precisely? Democracy and inter-species co-operation?”

Kylo winces. “That bit I’m still not convinced about, but the... Force... Poe. They couldn’t teach me how to... how to deal with my emotions. The more emotional I got, the more _angry_ with me they got. They would try to punish me for it.”

“Punish you... how?”

“Have you ever _tried_ meditating? Have you ever been told you’re not allowed to feel things like everyone else, and if you do, you have to go sit in isolation until you’re ‘calm’ enough? And when you don’t magically become this walking corpse of no feeling...”

This does not sound right. “I’m missing something. Why did you have to calm down?”

“Because it was always the _Dark Side_. If I got angry, it was the Dark Side. If I got jealous, or sad, or afraid. Anything negative was always... it was always the _Vader_ in me.” 

Kylo’s voice is like listening to a storm from behind very, very thin transparisteel. So much danger, so close by. Just a crack and it could get through. 

“...pretty sure... negative emotions are normal, Ky.”

He looks up, then, with shock and pleasure. Poe doesn’t know why, until:

“You used to call me that.”

It just sort of slipped out, but he smiles, all the same. “Why couldn’t you feel things?”

“They sent me _away_ , Poe. When they couldn’t handle having me any more – not that they were around much anyway – they just... sent me off like some dirty secret to have the feelings drilled out of me. All of them. Did you know Jedi weren’t allowed to fall in love?”

“Your mom did.”

“She’s not a Jedi.” Kylo runs a hand over his nose, pinching at the bridge and sliding off like water. “Neither am I, now.”

Poe doesn’t understand. “Why is it okay for her, and not you?”

“Well... by the time she was old enough to use the Force, her whole planet and her adoptive parents had been blown up. But she... she and Dad... well. Let’s just say there was as much smoke as fire, there.”

It’s maybe good Poe doesn’t remember that. “So... you didn’t... want to be a Jedi because you would have to be...?”

“Emotionless. Entirely selfless. A non-person.”

“You think that’s what your uncle was?”

“My uncle never took a wife, did he? He devoted his life to teaching people, and teaching them to go inside themselves to some calm place where they didn’t _feel_. I’m sorry... I still wanted to feel.”

“So you left because of that?”

“And because Mast—because _he_ couldn’t teach me any more, and the Leader could. Because I was too ‘Vader’ for them, so... I left. And you came with me.”

It’s starting to get cold, on the floor. Really cold. Poe pulls the blankets tighter, and lets Kylo tuck them tighter around him in a little bundle of fluff. It’s a lot to take in, but it sounds... weirdly believable. He can see the benefits and the arguments from both sides, and that’s worrying. It’s not a simple black-white, is it?

“Someone had to look after your ass, it seems.”

“You were the only one who did.”

_You’re here again, Ben?_

_A woman of familiar scent and sound; his mother. She looks more worried than annoyed at the boy trailing behind her son._

_Sorry, I can go if—_

_You’re going nowhere, young man. Go get yourself cleaned up for dinner. You too, Poe. Scrub under those nails._

_Yes, Mom._

_I mean it. Clean, this time. Both of you._

_Poe knows Ben has only Threepio at home tonight. Han didn’t come back from the ‘job’, and Leia is off with her own, political job. Ben has other people he could visit: he’s adopted by basically any and every pilot, but they don’t all have kids, and he’s often lonely._

_Poe likes Ben. Ben is sometimes a bit quiet, but he’s super smart and funny and kind. He likes bringing him home for dinner, and Mom doesn’t **really** mind..._

“If... if I... let you in bed, you—?”

“Your honour will be as intact as you kept mine until I was of age,” Kylo promises. 

“What about Hux?”

“...I don’t think he wants to see me.”

“...not even... here?”

Poe isn’t sure why he’s asking, other than he knows the old memories of Ben are valid, and he has an affection for him, even if it isn’t (yet) love. But to cut Hux out would be... both rude, and potentially harmful.

“You... are sure?”

“No funny business.”

“No funny business,” Kylo agrees, and pulls up his comm, sending a quick message.

Poe gets up first, climbing into the middle, and then... “How does this normally work? Do we... uh, have sides?”

“Depends on what we did just before we sleep,” Kylo confesses, sheepishly. “But generally speaking, who gets to go in the middle changes. It also depends who needs to get up first in the morning.”

“...can... can I?”

Kylo nods, and kicks off his shoes. He pushes the covers to one side, and gets in carefully. Still keeping some distance, but not very much.

Poe doesn’t know why he needs it, but he thinks maybe some proximity will help with the memories. He pauses before moving against Kylo’s side. An arm is slung under his head, and then he’s curling up against Kylo’s warm flank. Firm muscle below. He smells familiar, and Poe puts his head on the man’s shoulder, bending his knees slightly.

When the door opens to Hux’s face, he goes ashen and nearly storms out.

“Wait,” Poe calls, freezing him in the doorway.

Hux pauses, and looks even more confused. “Why did you call me?”

“...just shut up and get in bed? Before I get cold feet?”

Hux looks to Kylo, then tosses his shoulders, followed by his boots. He moves into place behind Poe, but the man is so formal as to not breathe, and Poe can feel the chasm between them colder than any bed should feel.

Frustrated, Poe reaches behind for Hux’s hand. He pulls at it, looping it around his waist in a request. They’re all clothed, so it’s just... comfort. Poe isn’t even sure he has it in him to be aroused, right now. He’s too wrought from the day.

“What if...?” Hux isn’t moving closer, that hand deathly still.

“If you think I’m cockblocking you, you can leave. I just... I thought we could...” This was a mistake, wasn’t it? Surrounding himself with two men who find him sexually attractive, and expecting it to remain chaste.

“It’s not that I can’t keep it in my pants,” Hux scolds. “It’s that I can’t... ‘control’ _when_ it wakes up.”

“Uh. If. You don’t mind, I don’t?”

“Hux,” Kylo chides. “Stop fighting. I know full well you want cuddles as well. Let’s just have a night where we prove we’re not only motivated by sex.”

“Speak for yourself,” Hux mutters, but he does turn. 

Poe feels knees bend into place behind his, and then there’s a solid, leaner weight behind him. He’s sandwiched between them both, and Hux and Kylo’s hands lace together, over his hip. He traces his own fingertip over theirs, up and down, over the back of their palms and down to their wrists.

Hux’s cold nose graces an earlobe, and is apologised for with the tiniest of pecks with his lips.

Whereupon Hux _flinch-freezes_. Poe actually laughs at the over-reaction. “I’m not going to explode from a little affection, Hux. If it... wakes up, fine. Just... don’t rub it against me.”

“Alright,” Hux says. 

Poe can feel the two men settle into place around him, and he almost feels like this... could be normal.

It’s pleasant.

He sleeps much quicker than he expected to. 


	9. Chapter 9

Poe’s dreams wander all over the place. Snatches of things, broken memories that blur together. Most of it makes no sense, but parts are more vibrant than others.

_You’re going to get yourself killed._

_Ky... don’t._

_I can’t just let you fly your ass off into danger without—_

_I need this. I **need** it. Babe..._

_You can’t expect me to be happy with it._

_I’m not. But I’m expecting you to understand. You... remember I trusted you?_

_Oh, you are **not** using that._

_Why not?_

_Because it’s a low blow._

_To remind you that I gave up everything I used to have, just for you?_

_I didn’t make you._

_You didn’t need to._

_Poe... this isn’t the same. I was in danger, so we left. But you’re running **into** danger._

_If I don’t fly, I’m not me. I need to. I’ll do it as safely as I can, but... I need to. Like... like you need to feel._

He wakes with a start, and realises he’s thrashed a little. The covers are bunched up, and Hux is sleeping just to his left, not touching, but close. 

Kylo’s eyes are open, watching him in the darkness. 

“Did I wake you?” he whispers.

“Yes, but it’s okay. Normally it’s me waking _you_ with nightmares.”

“Happen a lot?”

“More than you might think. It’s a war, after all.” 

“But... you don’t regret it?”

“Regret what?”

Not ‘them’. He’s sure about that. He cocks a head to indicate everything _else_. The Order. The war itself. 

“I wasn’t free to be who I was, Poe. I was... shackled. Afraid, and alone. I wasn’t... me.”

And here he is?

“Here I have you. Properly.” Kylo strokes the back of one hand down his arm. “It’s not a... not even a sexual thing. I always loved you, and I wasn’t supposed to feel attached...”

“But your uncle... he must love people? Like your mother?”

“And their love was enough to try to beat it all out of me, to abandon me... you were the only one who was there for me, no matter what.”

“So no regrets?”

“Not getting you back sooner.”

Poe nods. He’s tired, suddenly, and the soft touches lull him down. “I’m... glad you’re safe.”

“Let me do the same for you.”

***

When he wakes again, he’s rolled away from Kylo. There’s a warm line along his back that can only be him, arms and feet tangled around his body. Poe’s sleeping with his knees tucked up to his chest, and his eyes blink open to see bright blue ones tracking over his face.

Sleepy, and dozy, the General looks like a completely different man. Without the stiff lines of his uniform, with his cheek covered in pillow-crease print, his eyes slightly grimy and his lips gently parted... he looks like a real person, not like a prim and proper soldier. 

Like someone you might want to spend time with. Like someone... real. Human. _Vulnerable_.

“You... got anywhere you need to be?” Poe asks, his tongue sneaking to taste his own lips. It’s not deliberate. Not in the slightest. 

“There’s always somewhere that needs me, but they can wait a while,” Hux replies, giving him the power, the options.

His face is softened by the night, his eyes flickering under how close they are together. He’s struggling to keep eye-contact, his pupils blown and his cheeks hot. Poe just... finds the drifting, sun-gold lashes beautiful, and he lifts a hand to cup his jaw.

“I don’t have anywhere I need to be.”

“Except with us.” Bold eyes stare back at him, then, daring him to reject him, to deny him. 

“Even half in the Resistance camp?”

“You saw the light once before, you’ll see it again.” Hux lifts a hand, curling around Poe’s own. “You’re still our pilot.” 

It’s way too elaborate to be a ruse. It has to be real. All the memories pan out, and the reasoning. The weird, jumpy pleasure he feels at the man snuggled behind him, the other one under his hand. 

He really shouldn’t, but he leans in to steal a kiss. The memories of kisses from before are all later, and he can’t remember the first. This will have to be a new first, and he closes his eyes to savour it.

Hux tastes of late night and early morning, more like a  person than he imagines he would choose to, if left to his own devices. Raw and sharp and soft. His lips are surprisingly supple under Poe’s, and the kiss they trade is delicate and dainty. Hux reminds him of that: of elegance and poise. Perfectly composed, neatly bundled. Just before he pulls away, the man wraps his lips around Poe’s lower one, sucking it away from his teeth and running his tongue across the line of it. 

It feels... really damn good. Poe strokes with his thumb, and moves his hand further behind Hux’s head so he can go in for a second course. He’s bolder this time, and he feels the cinch of an arm at his waist, a sudden hiss of breath from behind. Kylo’s awake enough to watch them making out, and so Poe has to make it good for him. Not his fault he has a competitive streak, is it? 

Hux’s hand goes to rest on Kylo’s, on Poe’s hip, and he feels utterly safe between them as he starts to explore more. A lick with his tongue, and Hux’s mouth parts obediently to allow him deeper in. It’s odd, and—

 _A flash of memory. A nose that’s so big when it comes in aimed nearly for your eye. Laughing, nervously, as they try to work out how to be around one another, how to get close, how to touch. It had been odd, but nice_.

He opens his eyes with a grin. The kiss breaks, and Hux looks confused. 

“What?”

“I remembered. So it was like I was kissing you both for the first time at the same time.”

Hux snorts, and then tries to withdraw a little, but Poe won’t let him.

“If I love this oaf half as much as you think I do, the fact that I want to share him with you? You don’t think that tells you all you need to know about how much I value and trust you?”

“Or maybe you just want to let him—”

Poe growls another kiss against his lips, flickering his tongue out and tasting Hux’s under his own to stop that. There’s a shuffle, and then he feels Kylo nosing at his neck, pushing curls aside to paint kisses over his nape. Urged on, he licks and swirls inside Hux’s mouth, clutching hard to his hair so he doesn’t run off again.

When it breaks next, he’s breathless and giddy. “Stop being an idiot, Hux. If we didn’t want you with us, you wouldn’t ever have been with us. Kylo isn’t the kind to... you know. Are you?”

“...if you... if you mean mindless sex, no,” Kylo admits, muttered into his scalp. “I had enough sex with Poe. But... I liked _you_.”

It’s amusing – sickly – that it’s taken him losing his memory to realise he needs to approach the matter. Maybe normal-Poe thought Hux understood, but this-Poe is so fresh to it that he’s not become inured to it. 

“You’re just—”

“Why is it so hard to think he loves you?” Poe asks, a finger on Hux’s lips.

The man’s nearly sliding out of the bed in panic. Have they never... Poe grabs his wrist. 

“Don’t.” It sounds broken. **Broken**. 

“I’ve seen his memories,” Poe reminds Hux. “You have to know how he feels. He’s not very good at telling you, just showing you.”

Which is why, Poe realises with a punch to the gut, Kylo’s idea of getting him back to himself was always just to shove his past into his head. He’s not articulate enough with those emotions (maybe because he’d been told not to feel...)

“ _Don’t_.”

Poe strokes Hux’s face, down his jaw, tries to tilt his head to meet his eyes. The man is almost exploding in panic, and he kisses his brow. “Ask him.”

“Fuck you.” He’s angry, fury in his eyes, telling him he’s two steps away from death... or a lot of pain.

“Hux...” 

Kylo – the idiot – sounds tremulous, and... how do these two function without him? They’re barely operating. They can’t talk about their feelings properly, they’ve been together (with him) for four years, and Hux still doesn’t know they love him?

Okay, some of this is on him. But no longer. 

He makes a snap-shot decision, the kind that you make in the cockpit. Adrenaline makes his senses sharpen every time, and he leaps on top of Hux. Grabs his shoulders, and slips behind him. Grabs his hand so he can’t fight off, and then pushes him towards Kylo (who falls a bit into the bed when the Poe-strut moves).

“You’ll thank me,” he whispers in Hux’s ear.

“Right now I want to maim you,” is the curt response.

Still holding his arm, Poe wriggles behind him, making sure he’s unable to escape. And then he looks over to Kylo, who is equally panicking (but more in a flailing way than a murdering way). 

_For the love of everything, if you can read my head: fucking tell him how you feel_.

“Hux...” Kylo blinks. “Uh. I... I thought you knew... we loved you?”

“Feeling love isn’t the same as _being in it_ ,” Hux snaps. “I’m aware I’m just an extra dick you don’t mind treating nicely.”

Poe actually whacks one then the other over the head. “Stop it!”

Hux is ready to round on him when Kylo finally gets with the program. He grabs Hux by the face, smashes him into his face in a rough, rough kiss. Poe can hear the hisses of almost-pain as teeth and tongues struggle to find a gap to push into, and he lets go of Hux’s wrist, confident he won’t bolt.

He doesn’t. The primp, proper, elegant man turns into a snarling animal. He shoves Kylo onto his back – not breaking their biting kisses – allowing Poe to see swollen lips, flashes of tongues, the rainbow-wet spit of their competition. 

It’s fucking hot, is what it is. 

Hux tries to slam Kylo’s hands down, but Kylo won’t give up. He keeps grabbing for his face and shoulders, to be shoved down some more. Poe doesn’t even realise at first that Hux is straddling one of Kylo’s thighs, grinding up and down as they fight for dominance.

Even on his back, Kylo isn’t giving up. He finds Hux’s face in his hands, pushes up and won’t give up even when he’s scratched, poked, and prodded down his sides, under his arms, above his elbows. 

“You idiot,” the Knight says. “You think when I said I loved you, that I meant anything less than everything?”

“You had _him_.”

“ ** _We_** _had **you**._ ”

Hux slams Kylo’s hands on either side of his head, staring down at him. Poe wonders if they’re talking silently, or if it’s all in the eyes. Four years, and he just felt like the third wheel? He almost shouldn’t be here, right now, but if he tries to leave he’s afraid he’ll break the moment.

“I hate you,” Hux spits.

“I love you,” Kylo replies, with open longing.

Hux drops, both hands in Kylo’s hair. He grabs knots of it, pushing it into the pillow, and kisses him just as angrily as before. His shoulders are shaking, and Poe strokes his knuckles over the line of them. 

The General’s head turns, looking Poe unblinkingly in the eye.

A question. A challenge. A need for input.

Poe nods. He agrees. To it all.

“Do you even know... do you even remember?” Hux asks. “How he likes it? How you do?”

A sad shake, no. 

“There’s no set rules. Which makes it interesting. But when he gets overly emotional, he normally wants to be fucked. He wants it hard and rough, and you have to take him slower. Don’t we, Ren?”

Under him, Kylo nods, his eyes darting between them. 

“He wants it to hurt, so you have to make it _almost_ hurt. Slow, and hard. Make him beg before you plough him through the bed. If he’s _really_ good, we both fuck him at once.”

“What about you? How do you like to be fucked?” Poe’s voice has shifted up half an octave, but he _needs to know_.

“I want it rougher even than Kylo. If I’m bottoming, I want to _feel_ it.”

“And... me?”

Hux flickers his eyes to Kylo, asking him to answer.

“You... like a lot of kissing, touching. You like to be sandwiched,” Kylo admits. 

His face is hot. Too hot. He pulls at his collar, and nods at them to go on.

“Kylo’s good at rough. I’m good at precise. You... are the one who makes the bottom feel...” Hux fights himself, the conflict clear. “You make sure they feel good about themselves.”

Huh. Interesting.

“Any... other hints?” His voice is strained on the question.

“Hux... loves to suck cock,” Kylo offers.

The man shrugs. “What can I say?”

Poe snorts. So the suspicion was correct. “Okay.”

“Kylo loves to eat _ass_ ,” Hux adds, with a fond smile at the man he’s straddling.

“...and me?”

“You seem very fond of using your hands. Would you agree?” Hux asks Kylo, who nods. “Like I said: it depends. There’s no outright rules. I made a joke about a rota or a battle plan once, and Kylo sulked for the rest of the night.”

“...it could almost come in handy,” Poe agrees. 

“Stop siding with him!” Kylo pleads. 

Poe sniggers, then leans in to kiss his nose. “I’m a novice, remember? I only just remembered our first kiss.”

“You want a flight sim?” Hux offers. 

“...that... might be helpful, yes.”

A gust of air down his nose, and Kylo mutters: “I still haven’t had _my_ kiss off Poe.”

“You think you can manage that, while I get him ready? I’ll show you how we fuck him. Slow, slow, until he’s begging. Then hard until he can’t take it...”

The noise Kylo makes in response is invitation enough, and Poe dives in. He slinks up against his side, and takes hold of the man’s hands, pinning them down to the bed as he brushes just lips over lips. He can hear, feel, and – on the edges of his vision – _see_ Hux peeling Kylo’s pants down and open, but he won’t let up when Kylo starts to pull with his hands, tutting a warning.

“You want to let me learn, don’t you?” he asks, and he knows he’s agreeing to this because of the adrenaline rush, but it feels _good_ , damnit. “Want me to see how to – how to make love to you?”

Fingers curl up to his, and Kylo’s expression goes melty warm. “You never needed lessons, Poe.”

“Maybe I just want to watch him fuck you.”

Which is when something happens down below, because Kylo’s back arches off the bed, and he calls out in pleasure, his eyes misting over. Poe watches his face, first, then looks down.

Hux, now stripped down to just an undershirt and socks (why? Poe has no idea) has one hand on Kylo’s cock. Kylo’s still wearing his shirt, but nothing below. He watches as Hux gives him a few rough tugs, then moves to palm over his thighs and belly, then back to his cock again. 

“You’d often suck it while I fuck him,” Hux explains. “But you don’t have to.”

“...want... him to watch,” Kylo says, into his chest. 

Poe wants to answer, but his mouth is dry. He nods, dumbly, and his eyes trace the dainty-strong hands that tug Kylo’s shirt from his belly, dancing it up to expose more skin. He’s paler still, there, and there’s a moment of movement as Kylo’s stripped bare, and Poe can appreciate the man below.

Man. He’s. Wow. That chest... Poe’s gaze follows the swells of muscles clinging to bones, the places where bones show his frailty as a Human, and the nipples that perk darkly up towards the heavens. 

“Poe?”

“You’re... gorgeous,” he whispers, then looks up to the man above him. One all obvious muscle and strength, the other all wound spring and lean anger. “Both of you.” 

Pale, two-toned flesh. They’re both moon-white, but two satellites around his dwarf sun. The dusting of freckles like orange icing sugar over Hux; the darker marks splattered over Kylo’s own hide an echo. He watches as wandering fingers stroke nipples tauter still, or move down to dip into his navel, or circle his groin and knead up and down. Hux’s own cock; long, compelling, and vibrant – bumps into Kylo’s; thick, and furious-looking. 

“I guess we don’t... put that and another dick in someone often?” he says, nodding at Kylo’s shaft.

“Sometimes, but normally we tag-team him. Or – more often – it’s spitroast. You know? A dick in each hole?” Hux works Kylo’s cock even harder at that, twisting like he knows it as well as his own. “I love to suck you off while Kylo fucks me blind.”

Poe’s going to die. All these images. All these possibilities. No wonder he was prepared to try opening their bed and their hearts. It just all sounds so great, and he ruts lightly against Kylo’s hip. “S-sounds... good.”

“You’re going to want to watch this bit,” Hux says, and then grabs something he’d hidden behind Kylo.

Oh. Yes. Lubrication. Right. Poe nods, and ignores his dick, focussing on the points of order. He knows in theory, but he’s not remembered how—

_Kylo’s bed is a bit too small for them, but they haven’t asked for quarters, not yet. Kissing and grinding and jerking and licking. Poe knows Kylo wants more, but he won’t ask._

_So it’s up to Poe to slide his fingers back, to rub behind Kylo’s balls, to ask him: Like that?_

He watches as Hux teases around the area first, sees how Kylo’s legs part as he welcomes more. Sees Kylo pushing down on them, and the inevitable _pop_ when the first finger goes in. It’s fascinating, and there’s no way it should be that arousing, but Poe remembers fingering _himself_ and how that felt, so he knows – some – of what Kylo is feeling.

_You’ll tell me if I’m going too fast?_

_Poe – please – **don’t worry**._

_You have no concept of boundaries, Ky!_

_Please, for the love of the Force, **fuck me**._

He looks up to Kylo, whose eyes are struggling to stay open, and steals a soft, sweet kiss. “Do you like when he does that?”

Kylo nods. “Like... when either of you do. You both go slow.”

Hux _is_ the military man, isn’t he? Poe watches as he gradually works Kylo open, a fond smile on his lips as he does. “You love it.”

Another – more vigorous – nod. 

“And you deserve it for making me feel I was second best all this time.”

“You did that to yourself,” Kylo complains.

“You didn’t _stop me_.”

“We did, now.” Poe can tell it isn’t really hatred or anger fuelling the barbs, but he doesn’t want to risk it, not now. Not when everything is coming together. Not when Kylo is riding Hux’s hand like it’s essential to his existence. 

Hux is gracious in his concessions. “Still. I’m owed a slow fuck. Don’t you agree?”

They both nod, and Poe arches up to kiss Hux, his eyes closed so he can’t be tempted to watch what he’s doing. So the moans below could be just from observing, or from more touches. 

“You want him after me?” Hux offers. “Once I made him nice and wet?”

Fuck. Uh. Yes. No. Definitely. Maybe. It mirrors this nicely: Poe had him first, and shared. Now Hux has him, and wants to do the same. He beams widely. “I’d love to try that.”

Hux shoves another finger in, making Kylo yelp and writhe, making him kick his legs and grind onto his palm. “Please! Fuck!”

“Soon, darling,” Hux croons, and his hand gets rougher. “Going to make you nice and ready for him. Fuck that responsive little hole of yours open.”

Kylo _whines_ , and then Poe watches the way his body parts around a third finger. His pucker sucks them in, greedily begging for more, and the way those fingers vanish all the way into him... shit. Shit. Shit. He’s so fucking hard, and he wants up and in there. 

“You think he’s ready, Poe?” Hux’s voice is cruel around the edges, but lovingly so.

“I think he is.”

“You always were the soft-hearted one.” Hux rolls his eyes, and slurps his fingers out. He grabs Kylo’s legs below the knees, bending him in half like he’s nothing, and wriggling in the triangle. 

Kylo looks frantic, his mouth parted, his eyes glassy. He nods, over and over and over.

“Would you please... assist?” Hux asks, as if trying to rein in his imperious tone. 

Poe is happy to, and he reaches for the other’s cock. It’s as hard as a lightsaber hilt, and he pushes and prods until it’s lined up, then leaves his fingers there until he’s buried to the balls inside of Kylo.

Kylo, who is now begging mindlessly under his breath. A litany of _yeses_ and _thank yous_ and _love yous_ that sound entirely genuine. He tries to fight the hand on his wrists, and then he’s not making a sound at all as Hux starts to move.

Poe lets go entirely, kneeling back to watch in awe. Hux – composed, sharp, focused; Kylo – reactive, fierce, fast. Kylo, who is the most powerful man in the room, personally speaking. And here he is, hands over his head in abject surrender to the man starting to ride his ass like it’s the way past Kessel. 

It feels so weirdly private and intimate. It feels... like he’s witnessing something special. Like this _means_ something.

_The first time. Pushing into him. Terrified it will hurt or injure. Bright eyes and little hisses that sound like pain but he says they aren’t. Not sure how fast to move. Not sure if he should move at all. A gentle rocking, a hand around his cock._

_Kylo begging him for more. Begging him to fuck him. Begging him to make it **last**. Knowing it will. Knowing things will never change back._

Hux moves. Hux moves like the planets do: to set patterns, inexorable and beautiful. The veneer of civilisation and politesse, but Poe knows – **knows** – it won’t last. Knows the real magic will come when he strips off the bars and stripes and becomes _fervid_. When he’s pushed beyond what is Proper into what simply Is. 

Poe moves, too. He moves to curl a palm around Hux’s ass, to squeeze the cheek and kneel to purr in his ear. “Fuck our lover for me. Show him how much you love him, too.”

This is obviously a Threat, because he’s shot through by blue eyes. Hux doesn’t like being ordered around, except when he does. Poe remembers, somehow. He leans in, kisses him with passion: teeth sinking in, urging him through the barrier.

Hux does _not_ give in at once, but then... Poe feels it snap. The bed shakes as he starts to throw his whole stamina into the moment, and the pilot pulls back to watch him.

His expression changes. Becomes _real_. A tidal-wave of longing, long-repressed, and he’s riding Kylo so brutally that the man’s cock bounces crazily over his belly, and the Knight has to loop arms around his neck. 

“Yes... please... don’t stop... I love you, I love you, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I love you...”

“You’re _mine_ , now,” Hux snaps. “ **Ours**.”

Below, the furious bobbing head says he is, he is, he is. Kylo takes every last rut with glee, and Poe watches as they turn into writhing, surging, needing. He moves to kneel behind Hux, wrapping his arms around his waist and sealing his lips around the man’s throat, low down, sucking as hard as he can. He wants it to mark, wants Hux to feel _theirs_. His fingernails scratch upwards, and when Hux turns to say:

“Close...”

“Give it to him. Then hold me when I do, too.” Poe yanks off his shirt, walks out of his pants, shucking them off the bed. 

A nod. Hux stares at him, and only him... and then turns to Kylo. “Don’t you _ever_ let either of us go again.”

Kylo insists he won’t, wordlessly, as Hux bounces his dick as fast as he can inside. The bed complains at the harshness, and then Poe slides his hand down from Hux’s ass to tug at his balls, right as his climax hits. He feels the pulsing through his fingertips, and moves to curl around the shaft that gradually slips out. He strokes all the way to the tip, gathering up the mixed fluids of come and lube. 

He wraps around his own cock, stroking a few times... before Hux is passing him Kylo like a toy. Poe feels a hand around his shaft, echoing before. He smiles as he’s guided inside, and it’s so, so, so good. Slick, warm, and flexing around him.

He walks himself closer, pressing all the way in, and then Hux moves to kneel behind him and cuddle him from there. Poe turns to kiss, leaving Kylo impaled and nothing more... Tongues, teeth, and then the slowest rolls of his hips.

“Poe... please... I’ve been so good... please...”

He breaks the kiss to look at Hux. “Do you think he’s been good enough?”

“I think he’s getting there.”

“You think I should give it to him?”

“I think he’s pathetic enough to cry if you don’t.”

Poe smirks. He bites Hux’s lip, pulls at it, then lets go. His attention flickers forwards again.

“Touch yourself, but don’t come until I say so, or I come. You can manage that, can’t you?”

Hux’s hands move, drawing over his torso, finding and pinching at nipples. Poe is surrounded by love, and he _adores_ it. 

“Yes,” Kylo agrees. “ _Please_.”

Poe throws his weight into his movements, using Hux as a wall to push off with every rough, hard lock of their bodies together. It’s nothing fancy, and he’s probably going way too quickly, but his head is fuzzy and he hasn’t really _had_ real sex he can remember from beginning to end. So.

He cuts himself some slack, and pinches thighs as he grunts his way to completion. Kylo _screams_ , and Hux laughs, and Poe comes almost at once. It’s the kind of climax that nearly knocks you out of your head: bright, rapid, fierce. Long-awaited, and wonderful. 

To his surprise, Hux bends down, moving from behind him, pushing his hair back from his face. His lips sink down on Kylo’s cock, and he bobs up and down the few times it takes for Kylo to come, too. Poe’s still in his come-filled hole, and Hux is gulping down his release, and it feels... _right_. 

And freaking good. 

He watches as Hux swallows every last drop, then holds a hand up to urge Poe to lie down with him. The General puts his head on Kylo’s chest, and Poe lets his cock slip from inside Kylo, then curls against his other side. 

Kylo, though, is beyond talking. He’s just a shuddering mess, and Poe watches as Hux’s fingers wickedly go to torment his too-raw entrance, gathering the leaks and bringing them up to his own lips. 

“You filthy thing,” Poe says, disgustingly turned on by that, even though he can’t act on it.

“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet _now_ , Dameron?”

Kylo’s hands vaguely pet at their hair, and he mumbles in satisfaction.

“Nah. Save some for me.”

Hux laughs, and paints the next lot over his lips. Poe licks carefully, then pulls them in to suck. 

It’s some time before they’re satisfied Kylo’s clean enough.

For now. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: violence

Hux is the first to (reluctantly) leave, citing dire consequences for everyone and everything if he doesn’t. Poe sees the agony in his eyes and kisses his cheek before he goes. It’s probably not entirely helping his inadequacy fears to leave them alone, but he goes all the same. 

Kylo doesn’t. Poe is grateful, because he’s not sure he could deal with them both walking out shortly after sex with him. Normally, yes; but right now he feels vulnerable and unsure. He catches Kylo watching him.

“I’ve tried, you know. To get him to understand.” Hux, that is. “He was always convinced because he was the last in that he’s the least important.”

“It can’t have been easy on any of us, working out... the groundrules.”

“No. To begin with, we – well. We were always going to be a couple, and whether sex was involved or not wasn’t really important. But with Hux, it started out as sex... then...”

“Feelings happened. Or... they’d been there, and you hadn’t engaged?”

Kylo shrugs. “I suppose. You were always more perceptive than me. I’m not... the most emotionally intelligent of people.”

Apparently so. Poe slides out of the bed, and towards the ‘fresher. He glances over his shoulder in invitation, and is pleased when Kylo follows him. He doesn’t feel like he can be alone for very long for now, and it’s just... 

It’s... because he feels very open, is all. And he doesn’t want to be left with his thoughts. 

The water is still warm from Hux’s shower, and it’s easy to slide under and let it hit his shoulders. Poe beams at Kylo grabbing the shower gel, holding his hands out in an offer to clean him. 

“Where do we go from here?”

“It sort of depends on you,” Kylo says. “We’d love you to move back in with us, but only when you’re sure you’re ready.”

“I think... I think I’m ready. I don’t remember everything, but... even if I never do? I... I remember enough to know you were important to me. And I don’t want to live here, alone, forever.” Wait. “That sounds like I’m just doing it because I’m—”

Kylo leans in to kiss his nose. “No. I understand. We can tell you stories, if you like? Things that happened. Or we can start like it’s brand new...”

“What about a bit of both?”

“Both also works. You can ask things you want to know... and I’ll do my best to answer.”

Poe puts his arms over Kylo’s shoulders as the man soaps over his back, sighing in satisfaction at the wet touches. His body feels nicely warm and sluggish, and his fingers play through Kylo’s slightly damp hair as he lets him stroke the suds to lather.

“Tell me... something you’d never tell me. Before. Tell me something you’d be too afraid to.”

Kylo’s hands freeze, just as they cup his ass. “There isn’t—”

“There’s always _something_. Hux would never tell you he felt like a backing dancer in our bed. So what wouldn’t you tell me?”

The man’s frozen, now, and Poe has to tug at his hair to get their eyes to meet. He can see open worry in them, and he pushes up onto the balls of his feet so their foreheads meet out of the spray. _Show me_.

_Sometimes I... I know the Jedi weren’t... I couldn’t stay there, but here is..._

Poe feels the frown, and he tilts his head to kiss Kylo’s lips. “Not perfect?”

“You are. Hux is.”

Other things are not. Poe is beginning to see that Kylo’s not entirely happy with here, too. Even if he doesn’t want to ‘go back’, he doesn’t agree with everything that goes on here. That feels a bit more reasonable. 

He also gets why it’s treason to even think that way, let alone share the thought.

“Hux?”

“...is the most devoted General you ever met.”

And also, they’re used to a level of creature comforts. If they decided to run off to form their own faction – or retreat – it would be at a much lower standard of living. Poe could slum it. Kylo, likely, too. Hux? Hux would despise it. 

Kylo’s hands move again, sliding up to wash his hair for him. It’s sensual, without needing to be sexual, and Poe feels sparks of memories with every swirl. Like distant songs, shifting and formless. He reaches for the gel, grabbing enough to return the favour.

The body under his fingers is familiar. It is. He knows where the curves are before his fingers reach, and he knows the scent of his hair when wet. The place to knead just above one hip to get a hiss, the way to kiss lightly at Kylo’s jaw.

“Does everyone know? About us?”

“...we didn’t exactly announce it at a full staff briefing, but it’s... known. I think.”

Under his guidance, Kylo turns to allow Poe access to slide fingers over his back. He knows the marks already, the tiny scars and imperfections that chart a path across his skin. He works slowly, easing down to push thumbs into the curve of his back, down over his ass-cheeks.

“Does Snoke know?”

“...he... has implied as much.”

“And?”

“That’s all. He hasn’t forbidden it, but I haven’t asked permission, either.”

Okay. Poe’s thumbs carefully stroke over the other man’s rear, and then prise his cheeks apart to swipe between them. “I can’t fly just yet.”

“No.”

“But if I don’t have something useful to do... I might go insane.”

“I always wanted you to work on... on training, and strategy. We could get you in TIE sims so you’ve got some ele— _ment_ of flight... you could brief us on anything you do remember... and consult with us on strategy.”

“How long have you been planning that?”

“...since I got you back?”

Poe whuffs out a laugh. He’s really smarter than anyone gives him credit for, and he finishes cleaning his ass and rinses his hands, getting more soap to move back to his front. “You were never going to give up on me, huh?”

“You saw me through some very dark times, Poe. Even if I didn’t love you madly, I’d owe you.”

“Even Dark?”

“Dark isn’t _evil_ , Poe. Love isn’t evil. If anything, ignoring it is.”

“Did the Jedi really not approve of it?”

“The Leader told me they used to take the _children_ practically from birth. You weren’t allowed to raise your own child. You had to ask _permission_ to have one in the first place...”

“Wow. Okay.” The Jedi are so far beyond his memory – even his parents’ – that the most he’d known had come from Luke, who hadn’t exactly had the best training, by all accounts. 

Kylo’s hands push Poe’s out, and away; he locks their palms together, and pulls the pilot in so they’re chest-to-chest. Dancing, to music he can’t hear. “I have my morals. My goals. And what I want – other than learning all I can about the Force – is you, and Hux.”

“Well. You have us.”

“I do, now.”

Once they’re done, they climb out together, and Poe is pleased with how it feels to break through that barrier of self-other. To allow hands to touch him, and to be free to reach out himself. They towel one another dry, and go back into the bedroom to dress.

Kylo has no change of clothes, but Poe does. Sadly Kylo is a little too tall to fit in his. 

“Your mask...”

“Yes?”

“You wear it all the time?”

“Usually. I try to not let the troopers see me without it. It’s... part of my image.”

A flash, and... “The Leader? He... insisted. And your old name... he outlawed it, didn’t he?”

Kylo nods. “You remember?”

“It’s weird, it’s like... some little details just are there. And then kind of, glimpses into things.”

“What about... after you were captured?”

“There’s...” he pulls on pants, buckles the belt. “I remember set scenes with intensity, and then there’s gaps. It got better, I guess when it started being ‘real’. How... long was I gone?”

“Months,” Kylo admits. “I don’t want to say how many.”

“Ky...”

“It was awful. Without you. I could feel some of what they were doing, and my only consolation was that meant you were still _alive_ to have them _done to you_.”

Oh. “You can do that, with the Force?”

“Yes. It’s... you know how you felt me and Hux, the other night? It’s like that. I can feel both of you, when you’re... uh... at extremes.”

“So... if we were getting it on, on the ship, without you?” He should not be trying to think of ways to wind his boyfriend up, nope. He still is. It’s better than thinking of torture.

“If you were _really_ enjoying yourselves...”

Poe’s teeth shine. “Sounds like a challenge.”

***

They go to what must originally have been Hux’s room. The one where they’d met to eat. Poe strides slowly around, taking in the hints to their life together. “We all stay here?”

“It’s the biggest quarters. We still have our shared rooms, but we don’t often go there.”

“Can I get a map of the ship?”

Kylo nods at the terminals around the room, the scattered collection of tablets. Way more than there needs to be. Poe somehow recalls that Hux will go out with one, and somehow come home with two. 

“Not locked down?”

“Poe... we _trust_ you.”

“You didn’t before.”

“You needed a little supervision, but...” He shrugs. “You agree, don’t you?”

“Well, at the time I didn’t.” He picks up one of the tablets and flings himself down onto the biggest couch.

“I should... really check on my Knights. I’ll only be gone a few hours. Will you be okay?”

Poe doesn’t want to be on his own, but he also doesn’t want to insist Kylo sticks to his hip. It’s not realistic, and Kylo _has_ given him a new cage, new toys, and a list of possible new diversions. He smiles, grimly, and puts a hand over the one that touches his shoulder. “I’ll be okay. I won’t explode.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. You go, and when you come back, you can tell me all about the sims you’ve got me flight time booked in.”

Kylo snorts, then bends over the back of the couch to kiss his temple. “I promise.”

“Besides. Now I can look up our sex tapes.”

“...you are joking, right?”

“We don’t have any?”

“If you filmed them, you did it without informing me,” Kylo replies.

And oh – there’s an interesting twist. Shy, is he? 

“You maybe be up for that?”

“...I think you should ask Hux,” Kylo replies, dashing out before Poe can give it any further needling.

Definitely one to look into.

***

Unrestricted holonet access doesn’t show him a world any different than he remembers. It’s very much normal. There’s no big, flashing signs proclaiming him a VILLAIN (rights reserved). The First Order remains a legally recognised organisation. The Resistance remains a shadowy adjunct of the Republic. 

Jedi still don’t exist. 

Or... not in the public eye. 

He looks at the ship schematics, but he already knows things. It’s just refreshing his memory to them (the scent of sweat in the Knights’ training dojo; the hangar bay he prefers to fly from; the angular lines of the bridge’s viewport), so he could navigate his way around.

So he has a sense of where _they_ are. Hux is likely... his fingers smudge the image bigger, staring at a static schematic of a room. A leather chair. Rows of men and women working away. Space zooming beyond them. Kylo over here, most likely: swivelling that crackling red blade around.

Do they both think of him? Right now?

He zooms the image back out, but his eye catches (of course) on _those_ rooms.

Those ones.

Cells.

Interrogation rooms.

Why? Why is his attention pulled there?

_Metal. Metal in his mouth, around his body. Around his arms, his waist, his legs. A coffin, pre-made. His face feels sticky, and when he moves, there’s a crunching sound of flaked, dried blood. Why does he know how that feels?_

_He hurts. He hurts. From his core out to the tips of him, to the final whorls of his hair. He hurts, and he can’t move. Can’t escape, can’t fight, can’t do anything but breathe and panic, breathe and panic._

_Fingers. They move. They move, but he can’t turn to find the clasps. Can’t find a tool to sink into the mechanism. His face throbs from the impact – how did he get it? – and he feels around his jagged teeth, mapping the familiar horizons with his tongue. None missing. No real trauma, just minor aches and pains and blood that feels like it’s on fire. **Crawling** skin, itching scalp, stomach doing loop-de-loops..._

_Someone comes in._

_He can’t see their face. He squints, trying. The memory won’t resolve, and he holds onto the tablet, but that’s now, and the memory is then, and there was nothing in his hands._

**_Poe Dameron. Best pilot in the Resistance._ **

_That’s not who I am._

**_It is. You’re the very best pilot. You know that, don’t you?_ ** __

_His head is forced from side to side, and he slams it back to try to escape the fingers._

_Let me go you asshole. Do you have any idea who I am?_

**_I told you. The best pilot in the Resistance._ **

_You can’t keep saying it and it becomes true._

**_I can. I will._ ** _The voice is wrong, so wrong. Brown eyes. The rest doesn’t resolve. The data is corrupted, missing. The holo glitched._

_Let me go, and I won’t tell them what you did to me._

**_I did nothing to you. They did._ ** __

_I’m not going to play along with your games._

**_My games? They have put these lies in your head, and I need to pull them out. It won’t be easy, but—_ ** __

_What... what are you doing?_

_A hypospray, primed. He can’t escape it. Can’t squirm away._

_The sting of it is momentary, but the cold spreads up like dry ice through the air. He wants to scream, but he doesn’t want the man to win. His vision sort of swishes like he’s staring through a beer bottle bottom. Slop. Slop. Slop._

_I’m Poe Dameron, he says to himself. I’m Poe Dameron, pilot of the First Order. I’m Poe Dameron, pilot of the First Order. I’m Poe Dameron—_

**_Best pilot in the Resistance._ **

_There’s something stroking fire over his chest, and he can’t lower his head to see. It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts he can’t pull back, he can’t pull away, it blazes through his head—_

**_Best. Pilot._ **

_A punch to the gut. Electricity over his temples. It’s all black and light at once._

**_In. The._ **

_His mouth full of froth as he leans forwards, screaming and spitting it out around the sounds. He can’t feel anything but the pain. He needs it to stop, but it’s too vibrant to allow him escape. He can’t pass out, and he can’t block it, either._

**_RESISTANCE._ **

_Order. Order. Order. Order._

_His nails prised away from his fingers, his joints bent, his whole nervous system hijacked by drugs and currents. One by one by one._

**_RESISTANCE._ **

_Order. Order. ORDER._

_Maker, but he needs it to stop. His head bashes back into the seat, desperate to stop the thoughts with blunt force trauma. Over and over and over and he needs it to stop he needs it to stop he can’t make it stop—_

Poe thrashes on the floor, head smashing into the tablet. He doesn’t acknowledge Kylo, when he runs to his side. The touches feel harsher, and he kicks and bucks, trying to get them to stop.

“Poe... Poe. Poe. **POE.** ”

“Nnnnn-nnnnot... ‘stance...” 

“No. Order. You’re home. Poe. Poe, listen to me...”

Poe can’t, though. His head goes down and under, and then there’s nothing.


	11. Chapter 11

When Poe comes to, he realises he’s lying in bed, fully clothed, with Kylo looming over him. There’s a hand on his forehead (why?) and he can’t remember what just happened. It’s all a fuggy, fuzzy mess of thoughts. Half-formed memories, pain and distress.

“You... I came back and you were...” The Knight frets above him, looking more worried than Poe ever remembers seeing him. 

“Am I... did what happened to me damage me?”

“Physically, not lastingly. Emotionally...” Kylo’s voice trails.

“What?”

“That’s why we asked the head doctor to see you. Neither of us have had experience of this kind of... this level of emotional and psychological trauma.”

“No? Thought that was part of the Order’s training pro—uh, sorry.” Poe squirms up higher on the bed. 

Kylo sits beside him, and nudges at his side until Poe realises he’s offering a hug. He smiles, and shudders himself closer. 

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I dunno. I just... I’m in a chair. I’m in a chair, and someone is trying to break me. Ky... they _did_.”

“No...”

“I forgot you. I forgot Hux. I forgot _this_. I still don’t really remember it... I thought I was one of them.” He still does. And doesn’t. Both. At once. His head is one hell of a confusing place to be in. How can he possibly feel conflicting things?

Yet he does. And he doesn’t know how to navigate through that. 

“He tortured you, but you’re still _you_ ,” Kylo says. “You’re still brave, kind, loving, smart. Your memories aren’t who you are.”

“But they inform my decisions, and I decided to blow up the Starkiller.”

There’s a long, long pause before Kylo replies: “Yes.”

“That’s it? I blew up a massive asset, killed – thousands? More?”

“Yes.”

“Ky...”

“Look, I... I never liked that weapon, anyway.”

“...you didn’t?”

“Why would I want to wipe out planets? I can see why it would have been useful, I can understand the threat and deterrent... but I’m... I’m not here to destroy life. I’m here for the Force, for you, and for Hux.”

“...but, the Order?”

“Has its ups and downs,” Kylo shrugs. “And yes, you did destroy it. But you also didn’t like the thought of killing so many at once.”

“But Hux did.”

“Hux did. Not the killing, but the... message. The... he thought it would end the war. That it would cut it down, that we’d end the fighting and the killing. I didn’t agree, and so I’m not that... not that upset it’s gone. I suspect they played on your misgivings, too. I don’t think they could have gone the other way, and made you fire it.”

“But how do you _know_?”

“I know _you_ ,” Kylo reassures him. 

Poe buries himself in tighter. “What if I never remember? What if I always feel I’m with the right people, in the wrong place?”

“...Hux... would never leave.”

But Kylo might, is the implication. He bites his lip, and wonders if that’s what’s kept them here. 

One man. One man who didn’t even know how much he was loved.

***

Hux is not far behind them. He finds them in bed together, and smiles. “Couldn’t resist?”

“Poe felt a little under the weather,” Kylo corrects him. 

“Oh?”

“Flashbacks,” Poe explains. 

He watches as Hux strips his greatcoat and gloves, watches as he keeps his distance. Still wary. Still giving them space. Poe clucks at him, and nods to the other side of him on the bed. 

“After I take off my boots,” Hux says, with a gracious smile.

“Sure.” 

Kylo looks to Poe, then... “Was your day... good?”

They really aren’t good at small talk, are they? Or is it just that Poe’s presence after his absence has rocked them from their normal routine?

Hux’s brows arch at the question, and he nods, brusquely. His shoes slide off, and then he moves to sit on the other side of Poe. “Adequate.”

“What’s your current... plan?” Poe asks, as Hux slides to his side.

“You want to sell us out?” Hux asks.

Poe checks his face to make sure that’s a tease, and he shakes his own. “Nope.”

“We’re currently pushing for the map, still. We believe the Resistance has the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker. So we’re attempting to catch him in transit.”

So, Hux does trust him. Poe turns to nose at his cheek. “I’ll be sure to leak that.”

A swat to his knee, and he snorts. From what he’s heard Kylo say about Luke’s training... Poe doesn’t feel all that well inclined towards him. Not any more. Poe kisses at the edge of Hux’s mouth, and then they end up rubbing their noses together.

“What’s for dinner?” Kylo asks.

Way to break the mood.

***

Dinner goes down well. There are only minor memories sparked over it, and the conversation remains only minorly linked to work. Kylo insists Hux tell Poe the story about the accidental poisoning (which Poe thinks was probably funnier if you were there), and Poe finds he enjoys the whole affair.

What he’s worried about is what comes next. He hadn’t really planned on jumping (back?) into bed with them. Well. He had invited Hux after Kylo invited himself, but he’d certainly edged them towards the sexy fun times.

And he’s sure he doesn’t regret them. It was good. It felt amazing. And it made things go a lot smoother between them all, but that doesn’t mean... does it? Are they going to act like he never left? Is he okay with that?

Poe watches the General, commander of the ship, helps by tidying the plates onto the trolley to be wheeled outside like they’re in some fancy hotel. 

Down, boy, he says to his dick. Just because he suddenly _can_ have sex, doesn’t mean he _should_.

Even if...

No.

Later.

***

Poe has less things to occupy him, and Kylo does not bring work home. Hux excuses himself to the other couch for a while, and Poe snuggles in Kylo’s arms.

He turns to put his lips to his tall boyfriend’s ear. “You want to have some fun distracting him?”

“It’s our favourite game,” Kylo admits. “How... far?”

“I’m game if you are.” He’s also afraid, but not enough to stop him. 

Kylo curls a finger under his jaw, turning his head to face him. There’s long, meaningful gazes... and then they start to kiss. They don’t make it quiet, and Poe enjoys the sheer sensuous bliss of it. Fingers in his hair, and Kylo kisses him like he angrily needs Hux to want this, too.

The thought that they could be ‘caught’ at any moment, that Hux could be watching... it sets off a little fire in his belly, and he moves fast. Lifts a leg, and goes to sit astride Kylo’s lap, hands over face, cheeks, neck, shoulders. Everywhere, as he feels two very, very large hands grab for his ass and use the grip to grind him into his lap.

Kylo could break him in half. Fuck, but the thought is enticing. He shoves his ass back to those hands, clawing at the various layers of black clothing as they rock and roll together.

Poe can feel the sudden shift in the lap under him, and he moves his hands down to stroke the front of Kylo’s pants, firm and hungry. There’s no way in hell Hux isn’t watching them now, and he feels so damn _thrilled_ at the prospect. 

How long had Hux longed and lusted after them, before Poe welcomed him in? How many times had he jerked himself angrily dry? He breaks the kiss to look over his shoulder, eyes cat-slit and bemused. “Still busy?”

Hux nods.

Poe turns back to Kylo, and slides both hands between his thighs, smirking. “Gotta try harder, babe.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since I fucked you?” Kylo asks, pulling his ass cheeks wide under the fabric of his slacks.

Ah, yes. Forever, according to Poe’s memory. The only thing he can say for certain went up his butt is his fingers the other day, and the thought of more is like a cattleprod to the small of his back. He moans loudly, shoving at those hands, making it clear he wants to try. 

“Going to strip you... finger you wide... and take you so hard you scream,” Kylo tells him. 

Which makes Poe’s brain just stop working. Like that. Stop. Still.

Fingers. Dick. Ass. Yes. Please. He looks so hopefully up at Kylo that the younger man laughs, and kisses his pout. “You want it, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” His voice gravelly, and he starts to strip himself, pulling his shirt off, then going for Kylo’s.

Kylo, who grabs his hands, and shakes his head. “I’m in control, now.”

Well, they did say they all switched. Didn’t they? Poe’s eyes widen, and he glances down to see just how big Kylo’s fingers are. Much bigger than his. He wriggles his ass, and yelps as he’s pulled up to shrug out of his pants and socks. 

“Lie over my lap. Want you good and open. Want to see your pretty, pink hole get spread.”

So does Poe. Completely forgetting his earlier reticence, he moves to kneel as asked. He doesn’t question how easily Kylo can get to lube, or how warm it feels when a large blob smacks between his cheeks. Kylo spanks a few, idle times... then his middle finger starts to whorl galaxies of bliss into him. Slow, rough swirls that make his toes scrunch and his stomach loop. 

Poe knows Hux is there, but he’s too busy letting Kylo work his expert hands over him to look. The sensation of his bare skin against Kylo’s rough tunic, the way it scrapes against his hardening dick... more moans, and then the finger broaches him far quicker than he ever expected possible.

It’s not right, is it? To be so full, but it doesn’t hurt. It just feels all sorts of wonderful and like he’s supposed to be like this, and he rocks into it, letting his head turn to see icy blue eyes and reddening lips. Poe smiles dreamily, quietly begging for more when he thinks he can take it.

He can’t. Or – he can. Just. It spreads inside, and he’s humping furiously, something _not quite there_ yet. Hux isn’t touching himself, but he’s pretty sure the man is as hard as he is, and Kylo just as badly.

“Feels... so good,” he says, encouragingly.

“Going to fuck you so hard,” Kylo replies. “So, so hard.”

He wants to see what it’s like. What Kylo felt like. What he’ll feel like. Poe turns to look up, as those fingers tease him inside. He must be used to it, because his body doesn’t reject, or fight. It feels familiar, welcome, good. 

“Are you going to stay dressed?”

“He should,” Hux pipes up. “Unless... he has plans.”

“He doesn’t have plans,” Kylo says, sticking to the third person.

“Then he should stay clothed. Fuck the toy like he’s worth only that.”

Poe knows he isn’t a toy, but it’s still freaking hot to hear it said. He pushes down hard, and then there’s a third finger in, and: “MAKER.” Split, almost up his spine, cut in two and twitching around those digits. 

“How should we do this...?” Kylo muses. 

And then Poe finds his hands lifted above his head, and he’s floated upright and into the air. Hands grab his ass, and he’s tugged backwards, still facing Hux, his ass towards Kylo. 

“I like how you think,” the General purrs. “Use gravity to split him open.”

“Precisely.”

“You know,” Poe points out, “...that ‘he’ is right here, right?”

But ‘he’ is simply held up by his wrists, though the pressure evens down his arms and isn’t an agony. They don’t acknowledge his existence, or his need. 

“Need a hand?”

“If you’re not busy,” Kylo replies to Hux.

Poe realises he’s fucked. Well, he’s _about to be_. The two of them do work well as a team, and Poe is surprised when Hux drops to his knees. Despite any confessions of cock-sucking bliss, this is still more than he thought.

Hux kneels, and Poe finds his legs draped over Hux’s shoulders. Hands on his waist push him down, and there’s a thrust _up_ , and he feels the solid, wide, length move into him. Thick, so thick, so firm and silky-hard. Poe scrabbles, whimpering, and finds his hands are free. Kylo has his arms around Poe’s torso, and levers him up and down, fucking him like a toy over his dick.

It feels... incredible. To be so powerless to resist, to be so split open. And then there’s Hux, kneeling under his own knees, supporting him. Cat-like, the General starts to nuzzle his face along Poe’s inner thighs, and the pilot clutches at his hair, trying to urge him on.

Hux sits back, tutting. “Now, pet. That’s no way to behave.”

“So-sorry...”

“Gentle, or no touches at all,” Hux concludes, then one hand grabs for Poe’s balls, and the other holds his cock still as he daintily starts to lap and stroke with his tongue.

The flickering touches are a strange counterpoint to the harsher use his hole is getting, and Poe presses in with his heels, silently begging for more. Kylo’s lips seal on his shoulder, suckling and pulling at his skin to leave a mark. The pain... is exquisite torture, and he pleads brokenly for more, for them to never stop, for more, more, more. 

“Do you think he’s been good enough?” Hux asks, between dry licks from root to tip. His lips worry over the head, and Poe tries so hard not to fuck into his mouth.

Those lips are gorgeous, slick with spit. So beautiful around his dick. The smile so maddening, such an invitiation.

“I think so...”

Hux clucks. “I’m not so sure...”

“Maker, _please_ ,” Poe interrupts, hands sliding to Hux’s ears. “Please. Fuck. **Please**.”

“It is his first time,” Kylo points out. “For both of these things.”

“Oh, _well_ then.”

Hux says it so matter of factly, right before taking his shaft in to the hand around the base. Poe _screams_ , and then claws madly as he’s bounced with increasing passion and vigour. He’s a mess of warm, soggy, lovely feelings that bleed through his whole core, so he can’t quite tell what’s being fucked, and what’s being sucked. He tries to make it good, but mostly all he can do is yowl in bliss.

Up, he’s pulled, then slammed down into sparks that explode behind his eyes. His balls, the space between his cock and hole, the whole... _hole_ and everything around it. It’s just one mass of ecstatic feelings, and Poe’s eyes roll up into his skull. 

“Gggggnnnnhhha...”

Hux’s fingers jab behind his balls, pushing up at something that makes the world go white. Poe’s not even able to warn him, spurting into his mouth and throat, hoping distantly that he’ll be forgiven.

No such luck. 

Hux pulls back, wiping his lips on the back of his hand, and the fingers on his taint slide back and in, alongside the shaft in him. 

Poe is _delirious_ with how good it feels, and he can’t get enough. Can’t. No matter what he tries.

“You want to swap, or both at once?” Kylo asks.

Nope. Nope. Poe bucks, fear making his eyes wide. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Hux tells him. “And it’s one of the best feelings in the world.”

“...I’m... I don’t... know?”

Another finger works in, and he’s so fucking _stuffed_. Poe’s eyes roll up, and then he’s nodding in urgent, urgent need. His climax should have taken the edge off, but maybe it’s Kylo’s fault he still wants more. 

He’s _male_. It is **_not supposed to happen_.**

 _I can make it happen_.

The internal voice makes him jump. He... he can?

He’s walked backwards to the bed, and Kylo sits with him on his dick, like a puppet. The shifted angle sends more jolts through him, and Poe reaches behind for Kylo as the man tumbles backwards, taking him with him.

So he lies, back to Kylo’s chest, legs grabbed and shoved up, offering his hungry ass for more abuse. He feels so utterly exposed and helpless again, but... he kinda fucking **loves** it. He grabs his own legs, holding them so Kylo doesn’t have to, and his heart skips several beats when Hux – fully clothed but for the hand pulling his cock out – stands in front of him.

He can feel. Every. Breath. Every. Heartbeat. His body magnified, and he shakes in Kylo’s arms. Is this it? Is this what it means, to be loved by them both? To be utterly, utterly ravaged? Because he can get behind that, and the soft words of reassurance by his neck.

“You can take it. You’re doing so well. So tight. So good.”

He wants to be, although not _too_ tight when the slide into him starts. When the rock of the second cockhead past his ring makes him yell and claw at Hux’s arms. He’s flighty, panicky, and then he can’t move because there’s two men inside of him, and there’s an incredible pressure against his prostate inside.

_Are you sure we’ll both fit?_

_Yes. Yes._

_Fingers on hips. Hiccupy laughs. A pressure, and Poe can’t remember if this is his memory, or Kylo’s. Or both. Just feeling, and never sure which one is ‘him’._

Hux sheathes himself to the root, and Poe shudders and judders below. Over. Between. His own dick is spent, but he can feel an itching arousal all the same. Not to spurt, but to hit that bliss once more. Kylo, it must be. 

“Tell me again,” Hux growls, his voice angry and violent.

“Huh... wha--?”

“Tell. Me. Again. _Dameron_.”

Eyes hazy, he shakes his head. “Not... my name.” It is, but not the one he wants him to use.

Hux’s expression pinches. “Pilot.”

“Closer.”

“ **Poe**.”

He claws at his fine uniform, pulls and pulls until Hux collapses into the kiss and bite and lick. “I love you,” he whispers. “I love you both.”

Has he said it? He’s not sure, but he knows he feels it. And he isn’t going to stop feeling it. He likes them, a lot. Loves spending time with them. Wants them _happy_. And wants this: this glorious, fucked up, unbalanced and raw thing. 

Hux goes _wild_. Kylo, underneath them all, basically can’t do much but feel and grab Poe’s hips, slamming him down as Hux shunts up. The rhythm they find is like some far-off symphony, and Poe just can’t... can’t... it’s too much, too much, and he begs for sympathy as Hux reams him so hard he’s sure he’ll never walk again.

It’s just... frantic. Fingers and yelps and moans and hisses and he’s kissed by one, then the other, then they’re kissing over his shoulder, and Poe doesn’t know up from down. He can feel Kylo’s arm grabbing Hux’s neck, and the growled:

“ **Come**.”

He thinks Kylo said it. He’s not sure. He’s just aware of a sudden, spreading, leaking fullness as they climax inside of him, aware of the way his whole core feels like it’s bloated with happiness, and how his body is so wrung out he can’t even focus on the kisses to his face.

He’s just.

He’s gone.

He’s gone for quite some time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Art](http://gaylo-ben.tumblr.com/post/152068739733/nsfwkylopoehux-kylo-standing-back-to-a-wall) by the wonderful [@gaylo-ben](http://www.gaylo-ben.tumblr.com)!


	12. Chapter 12

Poe sits in the flight sim, pulling the TIE through tighter and tighter curls. He’s the pilot, and his hands itch to gun, but that’s someone else’s job. He doesn’t know why his memory of escaping the _Finalizer_ includes failing to disengage the brake, the anchor-line holding the ship still. It seems like it would be common knowledge? Or did his mind leave it in as a reminder, a leash back to reality, jolting him hard?

Was he trying to hold on?

Bank. Spin. Pull the sights back for the gunner. Line them up. Line them up. Twist, twist, dive, yaw. The ship – unreal as it is – is as responsive as his thoughts. It’s beautiful. He’s not sure if – given the choice – he’d prefer a ship he could move like this, or if he’d go for one he could shoot as well in, but—

He brings the craft back in, landing it with maybe a micron of difference to his previous twenty-three landings. He’s used to the sim, and he’s itching for the glitches of the real world. Sims are too uniform, too easy. No matter how hyper-real, there’s always an element of fiction in their code. 

Helmet off, he jumps out of the mocked cockpit and runs a hand through his hair. 

Kylo is off-ship for the first time since Poe got ‘home’, and he’s feeling it. He’s been avoiding their quarters, knowing Hux is too busy to be there, and Kylo – who has more time when on-ship – isn’t around to humour him. If he has any other friends, he doesn’t remember them. 

It’s late, now, and Hux is probably home, or will be soon. Which means he can make his way there, if he wants. They’ll be able to sit down and eat. 

Poe still remembers the edge to Hux, though. It was Kylo’s attraction that started this, even if Poe has to admit there’s a spark between them, too. If it hadn’t been for Kylo’s interest, it would never have happened. To be around Hux without him feels strange. 

He needs to, though, if they’re going to really make this work.

Looking one last, longing time at the flight sim, he goes back home.

***

Hux is, indeed, home. But he looks like he only just got in, and he jumps when the door opens to let Poe in. Poe stares, and is hit by the realisation that the General doesn’t know how to be around him without Kylo, either. 

Did they used to be better at it? Perhaps.

“Rough day?” he asks.

“Could have been better,” Hux agrees. “Yours?”

“Dull. You gotta let me do something real, soon.”

“You’ve decided you’re really one of us, then?”

“...how honest do you want me to be?”

“Then you’re not getting a mission, flyboy.” Hux pulls his gloves off, and nods to the table where food is already waiting.

Poe slips across the table from him. Kylo’s convinced enough to go on this mission, because it wasn’t even mandated by the Leader. Poe’s taking that as a positive sign, even if Hux won’t let him back in a cockpit properly. He’s not about to fly off to—

“Did I ever tell you where the Resistance base was?”

“You most assuredly did not.”

“I want to.” 

“They will have moved, now, so it’s immaterial.”

Oh. Right. Yes. Poe slumps into his chair. “Guess I missed the window of opportunity.”

“In fairness, you were unconscious in a tank of Bacta during that window,” Hux offers. 

“So... is there even a way I can convince you I’m... not about to defect? I mean. I thought what we all do was—“

“Double agents are not above using their bodies, you know.” Hux’s eyes roll, and he starts dishing out the vegetables for himself. “Plus, you might just enjoy the sexual fraternisation. Even without ulterior motivations of making us trust you.”

“Is there actually a way for me to make you believe me?”

“Yes. Believe yourself, first.”

That hurts, but he supposes it’s fair. After all, he’s still not convinced. “How can I ever believe, now? I’ve been made to feel something that isn’t true, whichever one really is. I’ll never know for certain which reality is the ‘real’ one. If I think about it too long, I—“

“Don’t you see how much that could hurt _us_?” Hux asks. “Making us feel like we’re just another possible illusion, instead of the real thing?”

“The Resistance felt real, too.”

“And were you in love with anyone there?”

“My astromech? No – not like _that_ before you start... I was married to my job.”

Hux puts down the dish. “You’re going to need to make a choice, Poe Dameron. You can’t just... string us along. If you’re back in our lives, you have to believe we’re telling the truth. How can we love you, if you don’t trust us?”

“More like, how can _I_ love _you_ if I don’t trust you,” Poe corrects him. 

“Yes. That too.”

“Hux... can’t you imagine how I feel? I still remember feeling like all those things were real. It’s not like... it’s all there. And it feels as real as any other memory. Some of them may have been made up, but the others... because I believed, they felt real.”

“And they weren’t.”

“But even if they weren’t, I _felt_ like they were.”

“And knowing they were wrong doesn’t make the feeling go?”

Poe shakes his head. It does not make the feeling go at all. If anything, he just feels more distress. It’s awful. “I keep thinking that I’ll see through them, but – I remember the sensation. Even if the reasoning is unsound to me, the emotion I felt then? I just... I feel betrayed, but... by both sides.”

Hux ponders for a moment, then clears his throat. “I see.”

“Do you?”

“Not really.”

“Imagine never being able to unfeel something you once felt.”

“I can move on from things, though. I used to hate Kylo, and you.”

“But you remember the change. You remember making the change in your heart, and for me? Each time it’s in a vacuum, it’s one minute one... the next minute the other. I can’t... I can’t follow the logic because there is none.” And it’s driving him crazy. 

Hux’s lips suck inside his mouth, his fingers wavering over his cutlery. “What if it never makes sense to you?”

“Don’t you think I’m terrified of that?”

“I suppose you are.”

“I’m terrified of it, but... I’ll be honest with you, if you...?”

“Of course we want it,” the General scoffs. “Even if it’s something we don’t want to hear, we’d rather know the truth. Is... me keeping you on the ship making you very unhappy?”

Poe nods, slowly. “I get that you don’t want me to run, but I don’t have a life, not now. I’m still a prisoner, even in a big cell.”

“And I have to let you be able to run, to know you won’t...”

“Yes.” Yes. He resents being so cooped up, resents not having the freedom to leave. He pushes the cooling vegetables around the plate, his appetite gone. 

“I’m sorry. When Kylo is back? Is that acceptable?”

Poe smiles. “Yeah. You can give me just... you know. Flight manoeuvres around the ship, first. Ships with hyperdrives can come later. Baby steps?”

“I can work with that.”

***

Poe climbs into bed with Hux, a little more gingerly. He doesn’t remember any times with just two of them, before this whole incident, and there haven’t really been any since he came ‘back’. It’s their first, in a long line of second firsts for him.

Hux always wears pyjamas on his lower half, unless they’ve started out with heavy petting, and Poe echoes the sentiment. The man’s done unspeakably erotic things to his body, but there’s still a thin veneer there.

He realises, now, that none of them have been intimate with him alone. Not since his return.

“Can I ask questions?” he asks, ignoring the fact that he’s just asked one anyway.

Hux’s eyes shine in the dark, his body half-turned towards him, not quite all the way yet. “Of course.”

“Did... did we only do things all three of us?”

“To begin with.”

“But after...?”

“Sometimes, if someone was away. More often it would be you and Kylo, but occasionally he and I, or you and I.”

“I’m sorry if I made you feel excluded. It was shitty of me, even if I was feeling jealous myself.” Can he apologise for past behaviour if he doesn’t remember it? Doesn’t matter, he’s going to try, anyway. 

“I always figured I was mostly there as a—nevermind.”

Poe grabs Hux’s wrist. Curls his fingers around, and brings his knuckles up. “You weren’t. I can tell, because Kylo wouldn’t jump into bed with someone without feeling for them. And neither would I.”

“You were good at hiding it.”

“Yeah. My bad. But I want to make up for it, now. You’re... you’ve got an incredible mind, you know? I’m not going to compliment your body because you know that’s hot and it’s also out of your control...” He winces at the tiny snort Hux gives out. “No, I’m serious. You’re hot as fuck, but that’s not your best quality.”

“I’m listening,” Hux says, his eyes warm. 

Poe laughs. “Okay. So. You’re a military fucking _genius_. And you’re freaking gorgeous. And you’re really funny, when people understand you. And you’re actually really driven and strong-willed.”

“All good points.”

“And you’re modest.”

“Now you’re flattering me,” Hux accuses, leaning over to ask for a kiss.

It sets strange fluttering feelings going, and Poe closes his eyes to accept the kiss. It’s soft, romantic in a way he would once have never expected, and the little whisper of tongue to seal the deal is just so fucking great that he wants to yell in joy.

“Maybe you’re not modest on the surface, but underneath you are. You talk bigger than you feel.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. You don’t like compliments, except you do. They make you feel uncomfortable and like kissing the person giving you them.”

Hux snorts, and kisses him again. This time there’s more tongue, and Poe enjoys the leisurely tour of his mouth. Licking back and forth, sucking, breathing together. It’s almost shy like he imagines he once was, and maybe is again. It’s actually kind of nice to get a chance to do this over, to do it right.

“You also are afraid you’re in love,” he whispers, to the mouth that’s just above his. 

“What makes you think that?” Hux’s voice is shaky, trying to hide the worry in it. 

“Because I feel the same way. I feel like – like I’m falling in love all over, with both of you. And not so long before, I didn’t even know I could love one of you, let alone two.”

“You think it’s really possible?”

“Kylo loves us both. So it must be.”

Hux’s throat works, the sounds of swallowing and trying to cope. Poe hears them magnified across the pillow, as they touch one another with reverence. Fingers on cheeks, on hips, on arms. 

“I never loved anyone before,” Hux admits.

“Me either. I’m sure of that. Whatever I remember... I remember that.”

“Do you remember loving me?”

Poe nods. “I do. I remember conflict, too, but I remember... feeling.”

Hands slide into his curls, pull their foreheads together. “We make this work. We have to. If you need me to let you go... I let you go.”

“I’ll come back,” Poe promises. “I made my decision.”

He did. Didn’t he? When he welcomed them both in. Maybe he doesn’t fully agree with the Order, and maybe he never did. But he’s not going to fix it by leaving, he’s going to fix it by leading it. With Hux. With Kylo.

And that’s where his lovers are, so that’s where he wants to be. 

Poe surges over Hux, grabbing his hands and pinning them to the pillow. A leg cocked over his, and he slides their clothed lower halves together. 

“You’re sure?”

“I wouldn’t leave you, either of you,” Poe replies. “This is where I belong.”

“Why don’t you convince me?” Hux teases, with a glint of his teeth.

Poe smirks, and starts to rain down kisses all over his face. It’s probably not what he was asking for, but he loves the startled, squawking giggle sound that his actions elicit. He keeps them up, down his neck and towards his chest. Lower, over his nipples and then his hands start to draw little whorls over his flanks, making Hux squirm.

“Stop tickling me!”

“Can’t,” Poe says, as he uses his nose in his bellybutton.

“You little shit.”

Hands go into his hair as he sinks lower, legs parting in open invitation. Poe pulls down the waistband by degrees, exposing the low strip of abdomen and glorious little firestorm of curls. Rising proud and ready is the thick shaft, and Poe starts the tickly kisses there, too. 

“I hate you,” Hux complains.

“That’s love,” Poe replies, smoothly, and then licks up the length of him to the tip, sealing his lips around the head and suckling hard.

Hux moans loudly, and Poe smiles as he bobs his head down, taking as much as he can at once. He slurps messily, and Poe is struck by flashes.

The first time, not sure how he’d ever fit all of Kylo’s cock in his mouth. A hand around the base and nearly choking. It makes him smile to remember that, and then...

He lifts his head, watching Hux’s face. “The first time. You and me. Just us. You... did this?”

Hux nods. “Yeah. I figured I was good enough at head for you to not feel too disappointed.”

“Okay. For the record – from now on? You’re just as much my boyfriend as Kylo. Okay? I don’t do half-assed shit. Whatever was before, it’s not happening now. You wanna fuck Kylo when I’m not around? You do it. You wanna hang out with either of us? Shit – man – I just... I want you _both_ , and I mean _properly_.”

Hux’s eyes look close to tears, and Poe surges up to kiss his nose.

A hand grabs his hair, holding fiercely tight. “I do.”

“I know.”

“But—“

“I _know_ ,” Poe insists. “Let me show you.”

Hux nods, and lets go of his hair. Poe sits back, and wraps his hand around his cock. Slow, slow strokes and his eyes never leave Hux’s. “I’m going to make you come so hard, General. Going to show you how fucking much you mean to me. How I want you happy...”

The General actually _squirms_ , pulling back a little, until Poe’s hand on his belly stops him.

“Poe...”

“No. You don’t get to run away. I fucking love you, okay? So much so I’m even willing to spend the rest of my life on this ship if you never let me go. But I do. I love you. And I’m so mad I ever let you feel I didn’t.” What was past him thinking? He strokes him harder, glaring him down into submission.

“It’s just my insecurity.”

“Which I should have helped you with, and I am going to start doing. Right now.”

Maybe giving him head isn’t really how to make him feel loved, but if Hux thought it was how to woo him, he must rate the act. Poe drops his mouth around him, slurping first, then tightening his lips and tongue to give him something to work against. He might not be as skilled as Hux is, but he’s enthusiastic. It’s sloppy, slobbery, and rapid as he tries to get him there fast and sure. Hand bouncing to his balls, and the other presses that place _behind_ his balls that makes Hux buck and howl.

Sure enough, the hands in his hair are accompanied by an un-Generally whimper. He wishes Hux had the Force to read his mind, but he doesn’t, and all he can do is hum and fist over his own cock at the same time as sucking. 

“I... Poe... I need to...”

Poe nods. Whatever he needs.

His hair is tangled tight, and then Hux is trying to bounce his head over his cock, but the angle isn’t ideal. Poe grabs his hips and walks backwards until he can drop over the end of the bed, still sucking (if with less finesse) until he’s kneeling there. Still jerking off, still trying to suck.

Hux’s ankles slam into the end of the bed, and he sits up to ride Poe’s face. The man holds onto the sheets with one hand, the other still curled around Poe’s as he thrusts, his movements messy and hungry. Poe does his best to take the punishment, loving the tiny thrill of danger and the knowledge Hux is losing his veneer of control. He stops trying to finesse as he’s used, starts trying just to survive so he doesn’t choke or gag, and then there’s that glorious moment when Hux’s panting goes _animal_ , and he feels the tightening under his lips before the explosion happens. Poe gulps madly, taking the climax, swallowing every last drop. It’s hard, but he does it, and he’s gasping when he’s pulled off Hux’s dick.

Head on his thigh, looking up. Warmth spreading through him, his throat raw but great.

“D-do you want... help?” Hux wheezes.

“N-no. Don’t need. Too h-h-hot.... hnnngh...” His own climax is just strokes behind, hitting the end of Hux’s glorious bed and leaving him worn out and happy on the floor.

For a moment, he just stays there, then he looks up to see how... content Hux seems. He looks more happy than Poe ever remembers seeing him, and the pilot launches up to hug him and shove him back into the bed.

“Freak,” Hux whispers, as they lie nose to nose, tangled up together.

“Yeah. But you love me, anyway.”

“I suppose I must.”

Poe kind of wants to comm Kylo, to tell him it’s all going to be okay, but instead maybe they can tell him when he gets home. 

It might be best to show, not tell.

**Author's Note:**

> Yoo, feel free to talk to me on tumblies as ever, I'm [@sithofren](http://www.sithofren.tumblr.com) and I am a dork.
> 
> [Art](http://gaylo-ben.tumblr.com/post/152068739733/nsfwkylopoehux-kylo-standing-back-to-a-wall) by the wonderful [@gaylo-ben](http://www.gaylo-ben.tumblr.com)!


End file.
